A BALLAD OF SIR JOHN FRANKLIN.
FROM A FORTHCOMING VOLUME OF POEMS BY GEORGE H. BOKER.
"The ice was here, the ice was there,
The ice was all around."—Coleridge.
O, whither sail you, Sir John Franklin?
Cried a whaler in Baffin's Bay.
To know if between the land and the pole
I may find a broad sea-way.
I charge you back, Sir John Franklin,
As you would live and thrive;
For between the land and the frozen pole
No man may sail alive.
But lightly laughed the stout Sir John,
And spoke unto his men:—
Half England is wrong, if he is right;
Bear off to westward then.
O, whither sail you, brave Englishman?
Cried the little Esquimaux.
Between the land and the polar star
My goodly vessels go.
Come down, if you would journey there,
The little Indian said;
And change your cloth for fur clothing,
Your vessel for a sled.
But lightly laughed the stout Sir John,
And the crew laughed with him too:—
A sailor to change from ship to sled,
I ween, were something new!
All through the long, long polar day,
The vessels westward sped;
And wherever the sail of Sir John was blown,
The ice gave way and fled.