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. 
