Gosse's purely descriptive power, his aptitude for
still-life and landscape, is unmistakably vivid and sound. Take, for
an instance, this description of high-northern summer:--
The ice-white mountains clustered all around us,
But arctic summer blossomed at our feet;
The perfume of the creeping sallows found us,
The cranberry-flowers were sweet.
Below us through the valley crept a river,
Cleft round an island where the Lap-men lay;
Its sluggish water dragged with slow endeavour
The mountain snows away.
There is no night-time in the northern summer,
But golden shimmer fills the hours of sleep,
And sunset fades not, till the bright new-comer,
Red sunrise, smites the deep.
But when the blue snow-shadows grew intenser
Across the peaks against the golden sky,
And on the hills the knots of deer grew denser,
And raised their tender cry,
[111]
And wandered downward to the Lap-men's dwelling,
We knew our long sweet day was nearly spent,
And slowly, with our hearts within us swelling,
Our homeward steps we bent.
"Sunshine before Sunrise!" There's a novelty in that, for poetic use
at least, so far as we know, though we remember one fine paragraph
about it in Sartor Resartus.
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