134 THE OCEAN. 



The constellations in their pride look pale 

 Through the quick trembling brilliance of that veil 

 Then suddenly converged, the meteors rush 

 O'er the wide south ; one deep vermilion blush 

 O'erspreads Orion glaring on the flood, 

 And rabid Sirius foams through fire and blood; 

 Again the circuit of the pole they range, 

 Motion and figure every moment change, 

 Through all the colours of the rainbow run, 

 Or blaze like wrecks of a dissolving sun : 

 Wide ether burns with glory, conflict, flight, 

 And the glad ocean dances in the light."'* 



This interesting meteor, occurring with more or 

 less of splendour in rapid succession, added, more- 

 over, to the universal reflection of what light may 

 proceed from the heavens by the pure whiteness of 

 the ice and snow, tends greatly to lessen the darkness 

 of the long and dreary night, though these causes 

 cannot diminish the cold. The latter was so intense 

 during the late expeditions of discovery, that the 

 temperature was 55° below zero, or eighty-seven 

 degrees below the freezing-point. 



The remarkable appearances called mock suns, or 

 parhelia, are extremely frequent within the Arctic 

 Circle. Their usual appearance may be thus de- 

 scribed. When the sun is not far from the horizon, 

 one or more luminous circles, or halos, surround it 

 at a considerable distance; two beams of light go 

 across the innermost circle, passing through the 

 centre of the sun, the one horizontally, the other 

 perpendicularly, so as to form a cross : where these 

 beams touch the circle, the light is, as it were, con- 

 centrated in a bright spot, sometimes scarcely in- 

 ferior in brilliance to the sun itself; at the corre- 



* " Greenland," p. 64. 



