What awesome sights are these Northern Lights, whatever be their meaning
As they dance and prance their ritual dance, shifting, fading, gleaming.
They pulse and beat and never repeat, show endless variation,
On a theme or a dream that always seems some mystic revelation.
Sibilant green with a vibrant sheen, purples, reds and yellow,
Muted shades that glow then fade, soft and rich and mellow.
Changing shapes from curtained drapes to dragons slowly creeping,
Curling tight then bursting bright like goats so nimbly leaping.
Flickering fires of funeral pyres of tortured souls departed,
Spirits at play at end of day, their nightly game just started.
A row of lances now advances, armies struggling in the sky,
Their proud parading slowly fading, disappearing from the eye.
What are these lights that fill the nights of arctic cold and silence
With flames and games of unknown names and hints of heavenly violence?
Do they foretell the funeral knell sending monarchs to damnation,
Or imminent wars bringing death to scores and endless devastation?
Is Mother Earth there giving birth from secret caverns distant,
To eerie lights that break long nights where the sun seems nonexistent?
For centuries now men have wondered how this polar show is rendered,
A reflected glow from arctic snow or moonbeams caught suspended?
Perhaps the shroud of a cosmic cloud from far and unknown places,
Or the baleful glare from a comet’s hair that swiftly onward races?
Is it a rent through Heaven’s tent, where fire and brimstone’s burning,
Or a glimpse through the door of Gods at war, lunging, twisting, turning?
Now men must know so men will go to the ends of the Earth to answer
The question why the arctic sky is reserved for the Merry Dancer.
They fight the snow and winds that blow through cold and endless nights,
To reach that place where face to face they meet those Northern lights.
One day we’ll look and find a book where mathematically treated
Will be the story of Nature’s glory, examined, proved, completed!
But I’ll not regret, or be upset, if I never see the day,
I prefer to dance, in ignorance, and let the Spirits play!
—Robert H. Eather
Image/video credit: Ole Salomonsen