Perched on my city office-stool
I watched with envy, while a cool
And lucky carter handled ice…
And I was wandering in a trice,
Far from the gay and grimy heat
Of that intolerable street,
O'er sapphire berg and emerald floe,
Beneath the still, cold ruby glow
Of everlasting Polar night,
Bewildered by the queer half-light,
Until I stumbled, unawares,
Upon a creek where big white bears
Plunged headlong down with flourished heels,
And floundered after shining seals
Through shivering seas of blinding blue.
And as I watched them, ere I knew,
I'd stripped, and I was swimming, too,
Among the seal-pack, young and hale,
And thrusting on with threshing tail,
With twist and twirl and sudden leap
Through crackling ice and salty deep —
Diving and doubling with my kind,
Until, at last, we left behind
Those big white, blundering bulks of death,
And lay, at length, with panting breath
Upon a far untravelled floe,
Beneath a gentle drift of snow —
Snow drifting gently, fine and white,
Out of the endless Polar night,
Falling and falling evermore
Upon that far untravelled shore,
Till I was buried fathoms deep
Beneath that cold, white drifting sleep —
Sleep drifting deep,
Deep drifting sleep…

The carter cracked a sudden whip:
I clutched my stool with startled grip,
Awakening to the grimy heat
Of that intolerable street.

Down through the blue-grass, running in long billows,
Heaped by the west wind, past the Lattimore,
Bordered by cattails, by the green willows,
Under a sky where white clouds soar;
Down to the pasture pond, by the lush morasses,
Beyond the nodding clover—
Then suddenly a cry, a flutter from the grasses—
Upsprings the startled plover,
Crying "kildeer," "kildeer," with wings interweaving,
Making parentheses against the open sky,
Voice of the June hours, for the April grieving,
Soaring and dipping, lost to the eye

Fellow to the winds, and to the green flags kindred,
Messenger of the prairie, and spirit of the hills,
Lost in the levels, hastening unhindered,
Soul of the landscape, heart that mourns and trills.
What a lonely melody, speaking the pioneer,
Winged grief that startles, and dies far away;
When his wings have vanished still you hear "kildeer"
Over dimming acres where the sky is gray.