A VOYAGE IN THE NORTH SEAS. 387 



Why didst thou in thy daily tasks refrain 

 By humbler bounds the tenour of thy strain ? 

 Perchance thy blood by Nature's partial thrift 

 To heights like these no more thy soul could lift! 

 But, burnt and withered by the flaming fire, 

 Was doom'd in that high effort to expire ! 



O how exhausting is the toil that heaves 



The soul's own movements, while the web it weaves ! 1 10 



The tides of life along the veins impel 

 The purple currents with a wasteful swell 

 And then the excited hopes the praise demand, 

 Which cold and uncongenial lips withstand. 

 It is the self-applause, which only pays 

 The recompense for truth's impassion'd lays. 

 The alien mind, fatigued, distracted, new 

 To thoughts familiar to the poet's view, 

 Lists for awhile, then turns aside, and hears 

 The eternal murmur with unheeding ears. 120 



But if the fire be pure, if in the brain 

 The love of an exalted glory reign 

 If round the tribe of any visions floats, 

 And his ear trembles with celestial notes 

 All vain the unnatural eifort to control 

 In silent gloom the o'erboiling of the soul! 



A VOYAGE IN THE NORTH SEAS. 



( Concluded from the March Number.) 



CHAPTER IV. 



" It was a wild and breaker-beaten coast, 

 With cliffs above and a broad sandy shore, 



Guarded by shoals and rocks as by an host, 



With here and there a creek, whose aspect wore 



A better welcome to the tempest-tost, 



And rarely ceased the haughty billows roar, 



Save on the dead long summer days, which make 



The outstretch'd ocean glitter like a lake/' BYRON. 



As the boat neared the shore, they found it obstructed by a con- 

 siderable quantity of ice, which the set of the current had deposited 

 there ; and they were more particularly annoyed by several large 

 floes, the rotatory motion of which threatened destruction to their 

 little craft. Keeping, therefore, as far as possible to windward 

 of the fixed ice, and threading their way as well as they were able 

 among the floating masses, they coasted along the shore in search of 

 some spot where they might land. The coast, of which they of course 

 knew nothing more than that it must be that of the continent, or 

 some island on the west side of the streights, was divided by a sound 

 or inlet, into which a current set at the rate of four or five miles an 

 hour. When they had drifted with it for two or three hours, they 



