Ode to Captain Paery
'By the North Pole, I do challenge thee!'
From 'Love's Labour's Lost.'
I
Paery, my man! has thy brave leg
Yet struck its foot against the peg
On which the world is spun?
Or hast thou found No Thoroughfare
Writ by the hand of Nature there
Where man has never run!
II
Hast thou yet traced the Great Unknown
Of channels in the Frozen Zone,
Or held at Icy Bay,
Hast thou still miss'd the proper track
For homeward Indian men that lack
A bracing by the way?
III
Still hast thou wasted toil and trouble
On nothing but the North-Sea Bubble
Of geographic scholar?
Or found new ways for ships to shape,
Instead of winding round the Cape,
A short cut thro' the collar?
IV
Hast found the way that sighs were sent to
The Pole—tho' God knows whom they went to!
That track reveal'd to Pope—
Or if the Arctic waters sally,
Or terminate in some blind alley,
A chilly path to grope?
V
Alas! tho' Ross, in love with snows,
Has painted them couleur de rose,
It is a dismal doom,
As Clauclio saith, to Winter thrice,
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poem by Thomas Hood
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