After Describing The Discovery Of The Antarctic
Continent, At First Seen A Hundred Miles Distant Over Fields Of
Ice, - Stupendous
Ranges of mountains from seven and eight to
twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, covered with eternal snow
and ice,
In solitary and inaccessible grandeur, at one time the
weather being beautifully clear, and the sun shining on the icy
landscape; a continent whose islands only are accessible, and
these exhibited "not the smallest trace of vegetation," only in a
few places the rocks protruding through their icy covering, to
convince the beholder that land formed the nucleus, and that it
was not an iceberg; - the practical British reviewer proceeds
thus, sticking to his last, "On the 22d of January, afternoon,
the Expedition made the latitude of 74 degrees 20' and by 7h
P.M., having ground (ground! where did they get ground?) to
believe that they were then in a higher southern latitude than
had been attained by that enterprising seaman, the late Captain
James Weddel, and therefore higher than all their predecessors,
an extra allowance of grog was issued to the crews as a reward
for their perseverance."
Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon ourselves any airs
on account of our Newtons and our Cuviers; we deserve an extra
allowance of grog only.
We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind to blow through the
long corridor of the canal, which is here cut straight through
the woods, and were obliged to resort to our old expedient of
drawing by a cord. When we reached the Concord, we were forced
to row once more in good earnest, with neither wind nor current
in our favor, but by this time the rawness of the day had
disappeared, and we experienced the warmth of a summer afternoon.
This change in the weather was favorable to our contemplative
mood, and disposed us to dream yet deeper at our oars, while we
floated in imagination farther down the stream of time, as we had
floated down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of a milder
period than had engaged us in the morning. Chelmsford and
Billerica appeared like old English towns, compared with
Merrimack and Nashua, and many generations of civil poets might
have lived and sung here.
What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry of Ossian,
and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare and Milton, much
more of Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. Our summer of English poetry
like the Greek and Latin before it, seems well advanced toward
its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage of the season,
with bright autumnal tints, but soon the winter will scatter its
myriad clustering and shading leaves, and leave only a few
desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and
creak in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impression
that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to
the literature of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various
ages and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and lyric, and
narrative, and didactic; but the poetry of runic monuments is of
one style, and for every age.
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