It was a gloomy, brooding realm

that seemed to hold, as would a steel war-glove

All winds and clouds and dreams that shun the sun, so far above,

With bare birch-boughs rattling, ritual maracas in the lonely winds,

And the dark and dismal forests reigning black over all,

Not even lightened by the rare dim sunbeam,

Which made squat shadows out of men;

they called it

Hyperborea,

land of starry Darkness and deep Snow.

It was so long ago and far away

I have forgotten the very name men called me, then.

The bronze-headed axe and flint-tipped spear are like a dream,

And hunts and wars for maiden, and mammoth and half-thawed river-valley, each Spring, like distant shadows.

I recall

Only the stillness of that morose country;

The clouds that piled forever on the snow-covered hills,

The dimness of the everlasting woodlands.

Hyperborea, the land of bleak Darkness and violent Hope.