From the frozen Pole to the Tropic sea

Thou wingest thy course with the drifting clouds;

O’er ghostly bergs and vessels’ shrouds

The beat of thy wings is strong and free.

Alone, or with thy tribe a host

Thou spreadest the bars of the low-ebbed tide.

On the wave-washed drift of wrecks canst ride

Or crowd the cliffs of a rock bound coast.

No home is thine save the ocean’s waste;

Unrestrained o’er thousands of miles dost roam;

And follow the trail of the liners’ foam

On wings that show no signs of haste.

Thou canst rest on the height of vessels’ yards,

Or the gleaming ice of the northern floe.

As the changing tides thou dost come and go

And the shifting wind thy strange course guards.

The seaman well knows the signs thou canst show

Of weather, and luck of the fishing grounds;

And the whaler smiles when the sea abounds

With thy thousands that come as the falling snow.

Yet stranger those thoughts that arise in me,

As I watch thee wheel of thy shining wings,

Of thy life o’er the depths where the ocean flings

From the frozen Pole to the Tropic sea.

—Julian Hinckley.