Page:Twenty years before the mast - Charles Erskine, 1896.djvu/154

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Ease the sheet, and keep away:
Glory guides us south to-day.

Yonder, see! the icy portal
Opens for us to the Pole;
And where never entered mortal,
Thither speed we to the goal.
Hopes before, and doubts behind,
On we fly before the wind.
Steady, — so — now let it blow!
Glory guides, and south we go.

Vainly do these gloomy borders
All their frightful forms oppose;
Vainly frown these frozen warders,
Mailed in sleet, and helmed in snows.
Though, beneath the ghastly skies,
Curdled, all the ocean lies,
Lash we up its foam anew —
Dash we all its terrors through!

Circled by these columns hoary,
All the field of fame is ours:
Here to carve a name in story,
Or a tomb beneath these towers.
Southward still our way we trace,
Winding through an icy maze.
Luff her to — there she goes through!
Glory leads, and we pursue.

Undaunted, though, despite their mirth,
Still by a certain awe subdued,
They reach the last retreat on earth
Where Nature hoped for solitude.

Between two icebergs gaunt and pale,
Like giant sentinels on post,
Without a welcome or a hail,
Intrude they on the realm of Frost.