Saga of Leif the Lucky: Part 3 -

Four hundred years
Leif slept;
Saturn kept spinning in his rings
And the ants crept.
Then Columbus came to Iceland, —
Did he hear of Leif?
A casual name treasured in old tunes,
An old man's tale perhaps,
Rumors men passed along the docks,
Something priests read him from their runes?
By every rule he
Should have known
Iceland was Ultima Thule.
Here, however, was an ant who thought, —
Clever —
Watching the tides and flights of birds,
Putting the words of fools together.
" God locks his secrets in a box
Whose key is paradox " ,
Thought Maestro Cristoforo .
" Therefore, it may be best
To go east by sailing west. "
So he sailed a hundred leagues beyond all thought
Into the western ocean,
Where Leif beckoned through the devil's weather.
Next act:
Eggs have stood on end;
The priests rage in vain;
The word " gold "
Tickles the ears of Spain;
Curtain upon an age...

Sweep on, you caravels of hope,
" Nina " and " Pinta " and " Santa Maria, "
Shall it be said, son of Erik the Red,
You were not with them
Because you were dead?
What ribbed the valid heart
Of the great Admiral
To drive calmly on
Into the sunset
Away from the dawn?
Not all was reason; not all was maps,
But the old tales came back,
As he trod the deck at night,
Up and down, athwart, up and down —
The tale of Norumbega Town,
Lending a tonic courage to his hails
To the " Nina " and the " Pinta " ,
As they swept on forever westward
And westward with the following gales.
And Leif was there the night
That they saw the mysterious light;
There in the dawn and the calm
When they lay
Like tired birds from heaven.
Leif was the first on the shore,
When they fired the glad salvo
On San Salvador.

How seldom do sowers
Go forth to the harvest,
Or hands wield the sickle,
That fling in the spring —
Yet Autumn remembers
Those dreamers of April,
Asleep on the hills
Where the harvesters sing.