  They hasten, still they hasten, From the even to the dawn; And their tired eyes gleam and glisten Under north skies white and wan. Each panter in the darkness Is a demon-haunted soul, The shadowy, phantom were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole. Their tongues are crimson flaming, Their haunted blue eyes gleam, And they strain them to the utmost O’er frozen lake and stream; You may hear their hurried breathing, You may see their fleeting forms, At the pallid polar midnight, When the north is gathering storms; When the arctic frosts are flaming, And the ice-field thunders roll; These demon-haunted were-wolves, Who circle round the Pole. They hasten, still they hasten, Across the northern night, Filled with a frighted madness, A horror of the light; Their only peace is darkness, Their rest to hasten on Into the heart of midnight, Forever from the dawn. Across far phantom ice-floes The eye of night may mark These horror-haunted were-wolves Who hound them to the dark. All through this hideous journey, They are the souls of men Who in the far dark-ages Made Europe one black fen. These who could have been god-like, Chose, each a loathsome beast, Amid the heart’s foul graveyards, On putrid thoughts to feast; But the great God who made them Gave each a human soul, And so ’mid night forever They circle round the Pole. A praying for the blackness, A longing for the night, For each is doomed forever By a horror of the light; Under the northern midnight, The white, glint ice upon, They hasten, still they hasten, With their horror of the dawn; Forever and forever, Into the night away They hasten, still they hasten Unto the judgment day. |
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