, there came a change
Over the moonlight and the courtly scene.
OENE upon the pavement pressed her feet,
And out the North-Lights sprang, to do her will,
From secret caverns underneath its pearls.
O'er all the land she bade them come and go;
Each battlemented iceberg on the deep
Of other seas, and every snowy hall,
And every citadel by frosts upreared,
Were lighted with wild splendors, as the troupes
Of messengers rushed swiftly to and fro.
The people of the Arctics knew their Queen
Summoned her subjects to the Presence then
By wavering tints which played beneath the Star,
And the great speed with which the North-Lights flew.
They hurried even to the Temperate Zone.
A band of phantom spirits took wings and flew
Far to the southern sky, a fluttering crowd.
A warrior, yellow garbed, with fiery spear,
Bestrode a frantic steed, and looked not back
Till he alighted on a distant hill.
With scintillant flames some perched on towers remote
Or bore green banners o'er the mirroring sea,
Or flitted through dim valleys, bright and fast,
Casting their flickering shadows down the deep
And awful solitudes of Arctic lands.

Such of her people as had aught to ask
Of favor or redress, from air and earth,
Came now, bringing petitions, councils, gifts.
Some slid on twinkling star-beams through the air,
Some sailed in shallops over the light waves,
And all who came had presents for their Queen,--
Rare tints which they had caught just as the Moon
Peered o'er the shoulder of the mighty Thug.--
Those dwelling in the caverns of the sea
Brought up the gayest jewels they could find,
And pearls from underneath their low-based bergs
Deep in the green waves, that, with thunderous sound,
Did lull the giants of the North to sleep.

There came, as time rolled by, from the far verge
Of her vast realm, the rugged guardian ghouls,
Stationed in fortresses and waging war
On all encroachers from the hated South.
These had wild forms and gaunt; their dress was rude--
Skins of the white bear fastened to their loins.
They bore long, glistening spears, and deadly clubs
Wrenched from the spines of monsters of the sea.
Their gifts were rude as they, and yet their Queen
Unbent the radiant quiet of her brow,
Gazing with favor on these proofs of valor.
Tal