44
The Conservative
Contributors Number
Song of the North Wind.
From Whence I come or where I dwell
Is never for you to know,
Be it height of heaven, depth of hell,
I hold you in my throe;
But before I come men signal me--
Red rag and rocket flare--
And I send my calm from over sea
To say I will be there.
Sired was I ere the world was born,
Old when the world was young,
An alien I from space outworn,
My shriek the first song sung:
Old was I ere thought was hurl'd
As fire by whirling pow'rs;
My cold breath iced a molten world
As play in dead-year'd hours.
When life, a weakling, writh'd in earth,
I held my chilling breath,
And mountains, rivers, men had birth
In the breast of unconscious death;
And I gave to earth, from out my side,
My children, changelings three:
The bacchic blood of my amorous bride
Flows in them measureless, free.
My beacon light is the setless star,
I roar in the Arctic track,
My breath, as a cyclone, rages afar,
I sing, --and mountains crack;
I smile, and the lure is deathless fame
And the sail of the iron ship;
I frown, and naked Is stripp'd its frame,
And crunch'd in my crashing grip.
I lay in waste the fertile land,
I strike the flowers heart
I barren the yield wherever plann'd
As I blight the bud at start;
I strip the tree of leaf and bough,
However my fancies stray,
I fling disaster into the Now
From a thousand miles away.
