A smile stole o’er his pale, storm-beaten face.—­
    “I know thee now, from mother Eve descended,
    By thy most feminine willingness to hear,
    The sorrows which did claim thy ready tears
    While they were but suspected.  Sit thee down. 
    Five years it is since, with three stately ships
    And sturdy crews to man them, one proud day
    I sailed away from the great three-linked isle,
    Under my fair Queen’s sovereign patronage,
    For the far Frigid Zone—­the wild, the fierce,
    The unknown Arctic seas—­through their cold depths,
    Their intricate, unmarked, majestic ways,
    To find a North-West Passage:  which wise men
    And skillful mariners, learned of the sea,
    Suspected, through the navigator’s art
    Might to the world be opened.  High my heart
    With courage and ambition swelled its tides,
    Knowledge I had and skill, with enterprise;
    And should I be successful, future times
    Should know my name, and future mariners
    Respect my fame and emulate my deeds. 
    But one faint spot was there in my proud heart,
    And that was where my constant wife, at parting,
    Shed sorrowful tears, until they did strike through,
    A fear, into my breast, that nevermore
    That faithful brow should lean to it again.

“To thee, if thou indeed hast safely passed
The horrors and the beauties of the sea,
I need not tell the ever-varying scenes
Of this most fearful voyage.

                                  “Day by day
    I studied in my cabin over charts;
    Or, on the deck, learned of the sea and sky
    The subtle mariner’s ever-changeful lore. 
    Prosperous we were, till o’er the mystic bounds
    Of OENE’s realms I sailed; save now and then
    Some noble sailor of my kindly crews
    With tears we left upon the bloomless shores
    Where birds nor flowers should ever bless his grave. 
    On—­on—­beyond all shores—­or sights of dwarfs
    Slaying the rein-deer by their snow-built huts:—­
    On, through the thickening perils of the way! 
    Methought I held within my brain the clue
    Through that bewildering labyrinth of ice. 
    For weeks the Sun, a pale and sinking ghost,
    With feeble eyes had glared upon the Pole. 
    Nor with his wavering arrows could o’erthrow
    Even the airy domes of delicate sprites,
    Sitting and decking their etherial robes
    And turning them, sparkling, to his sullen face.

    “Now from OENE’s dominions, messengers,
    Borne by the flying winds, hourly arrived,
    Warning me from her shores.  At last the Queen,
    Gathered together her enormous fleet;
    It bore down upon us with such grand array
    As I pray heaven never to see again. 
    An hundred giant ships, whose rainbow sails
    And glittering masts towered