Our Daily Bill: The Barrier Silence

[tealin]

The Barrier Silence

The silence was deep with a breath like sleep
     As our sledge runners slid on the snow,
And the fate-full fall of our fur-clad feet
     Struck mute like a silent blow,
On a questioning hush, as the settling crust
     Shrank shivering over the floe;
And the sledge in its track sent a whisper back
     Which was lost in a white fog-bow.

And this was the thought that the Silence wrought
     As it scorched and froze us through,
Though secrets hidden are all forbidden
     Till God means man to know,
We might be the men God meant should know
     The heart of the Barrier snow,
     In the heat of the sun, and the glow
     And the glare from the glistening floe,
As it scorched and froze us through and through
     With the bite of the drifting snow.

E.A. Wilson, in the South Polar Times, 1911