# The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 15/Number 89/The Frozen Harbor

THE FROZEN HARBOR.
When Winter encamps on our borders, And dips his white beard in the rills, And lays his shield over highway and field, And pitches his tents on the hills, In the wan light I wake, and see on the lake, Like a glove by the night-winds blown, With fingers that crook up creek and brook, His shining gauntlet thrown.
​Then over the lonely harbor,  In the quiet and deadly cold Of a single night, when only the bright,
 Cold constellations behold, Without trestle or beam, without mortise or seam,  It swiftly and silently spread A bridge as of steel, which a Titan's heel  In the early light might tread.
Where Morning over the waters  Her web of splendor spun, Till the wave, all a-twinkle with ripple and wrinkle,  Hung shimmering in the sun,— Where the liquid lip at the breast of the ship  Whispered and laughed and kissed, And the long, dark streamer of smoke from the steamer  Trailed off in the rose-tinted mist,—
Now all is gray desolation,  As up from the hoary coast, Over snow-fields and islands her white arms in silence  Outspreading like a ghost, Her feet in shroud, her forehead in cloud,  Pale walks the sheeted Dawn: The sea's blue rim lies shorn and dim,  In the purple East withdrawn.
Where floated the fleets of commerce,  With proud breasts cleaving the tide,— Like emmet or bug with its burden, the tug  Hither and thither plied,— Where the quick paddles flashed, where the dropped anchor plashed,  And rattled the running chain, Where the merchantman swung in the current, where sung  The sailors their far refrain,—
Behold! when ruddy Aurora  Peeps from her opening door, Faint gleams of the sun like fairies run  And sport on a crystal floor; Upon the river's bright panoply quivers  The noon's resplendent lance; And by night through the narrows the moon's slanted arrows  Icily sparkle and glance.
Flown are the flocks of commerce,  Like wild swans hurrying south;
The lighter, belated, is frozen, full-freighted,  Within the harbor's mouth; The brigantine, homeward bringing  Sweet spices from afar, All night must wait with her fragrant freight  Below the lighthouse star.
​The ships at their anchors are frozen,  From rudder to sloping chain: Rock-like they rise: the low sloop lies  An oasis in the plain. Like reeds here and there, the tall masts bare  Upspring: as on the edge Of a lawn smooth-shaven, around the haven  The shipping grows like sedge.
Here, weaving the union of cities,  With hoar wakes belting the blue, From slip to slip, past schooner and ship,  The ferry's shuttles flew:— Now, loosed from its stall, on the yielding wall  The steamboat paws and rears; The citizens pass on a pavement of glass,  And climb the frosted piers.
Where, in the November twilight,  To the ribs of the skeleton bark That stranded lay in the bend of the bay,  Motionless, low, and dark, Came ever three shags, like three lone hags,  And sat o'er the troubled water, Each nursing apart her shrivelled heart,  With her mantle wrapped about her,—
Now over the ancient timbers  Is built a magic deck; Children run out with laughter and shout  And dance around the wreck; The fisherman near his long eel-spear  Thrusts in through the ice, or stands With fingers on lips, and now and then whips  His sides with mittened hands.
Alone and pensive I wander  Far out from the city-wharf To the buoy below in its cap of snow,  Low stooping like a dwarf; In the fading ray of the dull, brief day  I wander and muse apart,— For this frozen sea is a symbol to me  Of many a human heart.
I think of the hopes deep sunken  Like anchors under the ice,— Of souls that wait for Love's sweet freight  And the spices of Paradise: Far off their barks are tossing  On the billows of unrest, And enter not in, for the hardness and sin  That close the secret breast.
​I linger, until, at evening,  The town-roofs, towering high, Uprear in the dimness their tall, dark chimneys,  Indenting the sunset sky, And the pendent spear on the edge of the pier  Signals my homeward way, As it gleams through the dusk like a walrus's tusk  On the floes of a polar bay.
Then I think of the desolate households  On which the day shuts down,— What misery hides in the darkened tides  Of life in yonder town! I think of the lonely poet  In his hours of coldness and pain, His fancies full-freighted, like lighters belated,  All frozen within his brain.
And I hearken to the moanings  That come from the burdened bay: As a camel, that kneels for his lading, reels,  And cannot bear it away, The mighty load is slowly  Upheaved with struggle and pain From centre to side, then the groaning tide  Sinks heavily down again.
So day and night you may hear it  Panting beneath its pack, Till sailor and saw, till south wind and thaw,  Unbind it from its back. O Sun! will thy beam ever gladden the stream  And bid its burden depart? O Life! all in vain do we strive with the chain  That fetters and chills the heart?
Already in vision prophetic  On yonder height I stand: The gulls are gay upon the bay,  The swallows on the land;— 'Tis spring-time now; like an aspen-bough  Shaken across the sky, In the silvery light with twinkling flight  The rustling plovers fly.
Aloft in the sunlit cordage  Behold the climbing tar, With his shadow beside on the sail white and wide,  Climbing a shadow-spar! Up the glassy stream with issuing steam  The cutter crawls again, All winged with cloud and buzzing loud,  Like a bee upon the pane.
​The brigantine is bringing  Her cargo to the quay, The sloop flits by like a butterfly,  The schooner skims the sea. O young heart's trust, beneath the crust  Of a chilling world congealed! O love, whose flow the winter of woe  With its icy hand hath sealed!
Learn patience from the lesson!  Though the night be drear and long, To the darkest sorrow there comes a morrow,  A right to every wrong. And as, when, having run his low course, the red Sun  Comes charging gayly up here, The white shield of Winter shall shiver and splinter  At the touch of his golden spear,—
Then rushing under the bridges,  And crushing among the piles, In gray mottled masses the drift-ice passes,  Like seaward-floating isles;— So Life shall return from its solstice, and burn  In trappings of gold and blue, The world shall pass like a shattered glass,  And the heaven of Love shine through.