To the Man of the High North

My rhymes are rough, and often in my rhyming     I've drifted, silver-sailed, on seas of dream,     Hearing afar the bells of Elfland chiming,     Seeing the groves of Arcadie agleam.     I was the thrall of Beauty that rejoices     From peak snow-diademed to regal star;     Yet to mine aerie ever pierced the voices,     The pregnant voices of the Things That Are.     The Here, the Now, the vast Forlorn around us;     The gold-delirium, the ferine strife;     The lusts that lure us on, the hates that hound us;     Our red rags in the patch-work quilt of Life.     The nameless men who nameless rivers travel,     And in strange valleys greet strange deaths alone;     The grim, intrepid ones who would unravel     The mysteries that shroud the Polar Zone.     These will I sing, and if one of you linger     Over my pages in the Long, Long Night,     And on some lone line lay a calloused finger,     Saying: "It's human-true - it hits me right";     Then will I count this loving toil well spent;     Then will I dream awhile - content, content.