Gave way with many a hollow groan, And with many a surly roar; But it murmured and threatened on every side, And closed where he sailed before. Ho! see ye not, my merry men, Sir John, Sir John, 'tis bitter cold, Bright summer goes, dark winter comes- But long ere summer's sun goes down, The dripping icebergs dipped and rose, The ships were staid, the yards were manned The summer's gone, the winter's come, We sail not on yonder sea; Why sail we not, Sir John Franklin? The summer goes, the winter comes― I ween, we cannot rule the ways, The cruel ice came floating on, My God! there is no sea! What think you of the whaler now? A sled were better than a ship, To cruise through ice and snow. Down sank the baleful crimson sun, The snow came down, storm breeding storm, And on the decks was laid; Till the weary sailor, sick at heart, Sank down beside his spade. Sir John, the night is black and long, The hard, green ice is strong as death; The night is neither bright nor short, What hope can scale this icy wall, The summer went, the winter came- The winter went, the summer went, But the hard, green ice was strong as death, Hark! heard you not the noise of guns? God give them grace for their charity! Sir John, where are the English fields? Be still, be still, my brave sailors! You shall see the fields again, And smell the scent of the opening flowers, The grass and the waving grain. Oh! when shall I see my orphan child? Oh! when shall I see my old mother, Be still, be still, my brave sailors, Ah! bitter, bitter grows the cold. Oh! think you, good Sir John Franklin, 'Twas cruel to send us here to starve, "Twas cruel to send us here, Sir John, To starve and freeze on this lonely sea: Oh! whether we starve to death alone, We have done what man has never done- We passed the Northern Sea! KANE-DIED FEBRUARY 16, 1857.-Fitz James O'Brien ALOFT upon an old basaltic crag, Which, scalped by keen winds that defend the Pole Gazes with dead face on the seas that roll Around the secret of the mystic zone, A mighty nation's star-bespangled flag And underneath, upon the lifeless front By want beleaguered, and by winter chased, Not many months ago we greeted him, Crowned with the icy honors of the North, Yelled its frank welcome. And from main to main, Jubilant to the sky, Thundered the mighty cry, In vain--in vain beneath his feet we flung With the thrice tripled honors of the feast! Faded and faded! And the brave young heart Wastes peak by peak away, Till on some rosy even He needs no tears, who lived a noble life! Such homage suits him well; Better than funeral pomp, or passing bell! What tale of peril and self-sacrifice! Prisoned amid the fastnesses of ice, With hunger howling o'er the wastes of snow! Night lengthening into months; the ravenous flos Crunching the massive ships, as the white bear Crunches his prey. The insufficient share Of loathsome food; The lethargy of famine: the despair Urging to labor, nervelessly pursued; That awful hour, when through the prostrate band Upon the ghastly foreheads of the crew. To all around him. By a mighty will Because his death would seal his comrades' fate; He stands, until spring, tardy with relief And the pale prisoners thread the world once more, Time was when he should gain his spurs of gold And the world's knights are now self-consecrate. In all its annals, back to Charlemagne, Faithfully kept through hunger and through cold, DISCOVERIES OF GALILEO.-Bg Ion. Edward Everett. THERE are occasions in life in which a great mind lives years of rapt enjoyment in a moment. I can fancy the emotions of Galileo, when, first raising the newly-constructed telescope to the heavens, he saw fulfilled the grand prophecy of Copernicus, and beheld the planet Venus crescent like the moon. It was such another moment as that, when the immortal printers of Mentz and Strasburg received the first copy of the Bible into their hands, the work of their divine art; like that, when Columbus, through the gray dawn of the 12th of October, 1492, beheld the shores of San Salvador; like that, when the law of gravitation first revealed itself to the intellect of Newton; like that, when Franklin saw, by the stiffening fibres of the hempen cord of his kite, that he held the lightning in his grasp; like that, when Leverrier received back from Berlin the tidings that the predicted planet was found. |