MEMORIAL TO BELLOT.
One noble heart the more hath Ocean stilled,
A heart that throbbed with brave humanity
And generous fortitude, which nothing chilled
But the grim water of the frozen sea:
Down to the deep, in doing well, went he.
No son of England—yet shall that be said,
Such kindred with the Hero as we claim?—
For we all mourn a Brother in the Dead,
Although from France he drew his birth and name;
Honour to France, increased by Bellot's fame.
Shall that fame have no other monument
Than pile of toppling ice-crags for a tomb,
A frostwork chantry, where, through cleft and rent,
The north wind sings his dirge, and sunless gloom
The Northern Lights are cressets to illume?
He died for England—so did one who might
Like him have perished, yet not so have died;
And when his spirit wakened into light,
Nelson, perhaps, was first that welcome cried,
Remembering what like fate his youth defied.
But had the floe ingulfed that fearless boy
Chasing the sea-bear on its faithless track;
Our more than Hector—for he saved our Troy—
It then had been our heavy doom to lack:
And Valour, unrenowned, had gone to wrack.
Not so with him in glorious fight who fell,
For fellow-man, with elemental foes.
They for their native land who die, die well;
But better yet, more notably than those,
Died he who sank amid the Arctic snows.
His country was his kind—in noblest strife,
Whose victors only suffer—did he fall;
Thus did this gallant Tar lay down his life:
Rest his brave soul with such good sailors all,
Beneath the flag of their High Admiral!