(IN ANTICIPATION OF HIS TRIP TO THE POLE.)
HALL! HALL!
D'ye hear our call?
Or, do you fancy it to be
A weather sign--merely the pre-
Monition of a squall
At sea!
HALL!
You pay no heed at all.
Nevertheless, O hardy mariner!
(A Snow-Bird brings this with our kindest love,)
We're sorry you prefer
Those frigid walks (ever so far above
The 80th parallel, we guess!)
To stocks, and tariffs, and domestic bliss;
Yes, yes,
Captain, we're sorry it has come to this!
Why do you madly thirst
For grog that's chopped up with a hatchet? say!
And tell us of the first
Strange thought which spurred you to go up that way!
Was it the hope that on some icy coast
(Frozen, yourself, almost!)
You'd have the luck to meet poor FRANKLIN'S ghost?
And has it seemed, sometimes,
That drowning might be pleasanter up there
Among the icebergs, native to those climes,
Than where
The surf breaks gently on some coral-reef,
And sirens sweetly soothe one's slow despair?
Say, was that your belief?
And who is BENT?[*]
Why was _he_ sent,
With his Warm Currents wheeling round the Pole?
A long, long race must his disciples run:
No sun,
No fun,
No chance to toss a word to any one;
And what a goal?
As hopefully you munch
The flinty biscuit, watching whale or seal,
Or listening, undaunted, to the crunch
Of ice-floes at the keel,
Say, Sir Intrepid! shall you really think
You pioneer the navies of the world?
Not while the chink
Of well-housed dollars sounds so pleasantly,
And safer tracks map out the treacherous sea!
If that's your dream, oh! let your sails be furled.
But, no!
It is not this! Your spirit, high and bold,
Scorning all tamer joys, will have it so!
No cold
Can chill its ardor! Such a soul would sate
Its deathless craving in some lofty flight,
Some deed sublime, and read its shining fate
By the Aurora's light!
For fruitful fellowship, it seeks the wild,
The frozen waste,
Where the world's venturous heroes--reconciled
To sunless, shuddering gloom--
To joyless solitude--with ardor taste
Their dread delights! and so at last find room,
'Mid nodding icebergs, for their watery tomb!
For this, we spare you,
O dauntless HALL! Once having breathed that air
So pure, so fresh, so rare!
And caught the wildness of the Esquimaux,
We declare you
Unfit to live where beans and lettuce grow!
Leave delving to the little pitiful mole,
Great soul!
And now, then, for the Pole!
[Footnote *: Captain BENT, of Cincinnati, originator of the new theory
of Polar Currents.]
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[Illustration: FINANCIAL RELIEF
MR. BUMBLE BOUTWELL TO MRS. CORNEY FISH. _(See Oliver Twist.)_ "THE GREAT
PRINCIPLE OF FINANCIAL RELIEF IS TO GIVE THE BUSINESS MEN EXACTLY WHAT
THEY DON'T WANT: THEN THEY GET TIRED OF COMING."]
* * * * *