(More than eighty-three degrees north—about a good day’s steaming distance to the Pole by one of our fast oceaners in clear water—Greely the explorer heard the song of a single snow-bird merrily sounding over the desolation.)
Of that blithe throat of thine from arctic bleak and blank,
I’ll mind the lesson, solitary bird—let me too welcome chilling drifts,
E’en the profoundest chill, as now—a torpid pulse, a brain unnerv’d,
Old age land-lock’d within its winter bay—(cold, cold, O cold!)
These snowy hairs, my feeble arm, my frozen feet,
For them thy faith, thy rule I take, and grave it to the last;
Not summer’s zones alone—not chants of youth, or south’s warm tides alone,
But held by sluggish floes, pack’d in the northern ice, the cumulus of years,
These with gay heart I also sing.