From the Newark Evening Star, July 22, 1914. By Chart Pitt.
The buoy-bell’s lone challenge wakes a dream of long ago,
When the happy sound of church bells rang out across the snow.
It sounds its sullen warning, o’er the murmur of the reef,
Where heartless tides are sobbing, like a lost-soul grief.
There was song and happy laughter, and the glint of love-lit eyes,
Now listless snow is falling from the steel-gray Arctic skies.
The angry surf is booming on the stubborn rock-bound shore,
While the memory ship is drifting to the happy days of yore.
The Northern wolf is calling from the headland’s wind-swept height.
Hark! He sounds the call of hunger, to curse the Arctic night.
The time-worn year is dying and the new waits at the door,
The beacon light is blinking from the shadows of the shore.
The mystic North is sleeping ‘neath the blanket of the snows,
But weary hearts are dreaming of the fragrant Southern rose.
The wild surf sounds its challenge and the shore flings back reply—
The world is bound in chains of war, ‘neath the dreary Arctic sky.