DISCOVERY OF THE NORTH-WEST PASSAGE.
I.
Strait of Despair! thy frozen lips at last
Unclose, to teach our seamen how to sift
A passage where blue icebergs clash and drift,
And the shore loosely rattles in the blast.
We hold the secret thou hast clenched so fast
For ages,—our best blood has earned the gift,—
Blood spilt, or hoarded up in patient thrift,
Through sunless months in ceaseless peril passed.
But what of daring Franklin? Who may know
The pangs that wrung that heart so proud and brave,
In secret wrestling with its deadly woe,
And no kind voice to reach him o'er the wave?
Now he sleeps fast beneath his shroud of snow,
And the cold Pole-Star only knows his grave.
II.
Alone, on some sharp cliff, I see him strain,
O'er the white waste, his keen, sagacious eye,
Or scan the signs of the snow-freighted sky,
In hope of quick deliverance,—but in vain;
Then, faring to his icy tent again,
To cheer his mates with his familiar smile,
And talk of home and kinsfolk, to beguile
Slow hours, which freeze the blood and numb the brain.
Long let our hero's memory be enshrined
In all true British hearts! He calmly stood
In danger's foremost rank, nor looked behind.
He did his work, not with the fevered blood
Of battle, but with hard-tried fortitude,
In peril dauntless, and in death resigned.
III.
Despond not, Britain! Should this sacred hold
Of Freedom, still inviolate, be assailed,
The high, unblenching spirit which prevailed
In ancient days is neither dead nor cold.
Men are still in thee of heroic mould,—
Men whom thy grand old sea-kings would have hailed
As worthy peers, invulnerably mailed,
Because by duty's sternest law controlled.
Thou yet shalt rise, and send abroad thy voice
Among the nations, battling for the right,
In the unrusted armour of thy youth;
And the oppressed shall hear it and rejoice,
For on thy side is the resistless might
Of Freedom, Justice, and Eternal Truth!
