A silent spectacle!  Yet sounds, ’tis said,
   On their forlornness broke; a hissing cry
   Of mockery and wild laugh, as, overhead,
   Those blight fantastic squadrons flaunted by:—­
   And that false dawn, long nickering, died away,
And the Sun came not forth, and Heaven withheld the day.

   O King Hyperion, o’er the Delphic dale
   Reigning meanwhile in glory, Ocean know
   Thine absence, and outstretch’d an icy veil,
   A marble pavement, o’er his waters blue;
   Past the Varangian fiord and Zembla hoar,
And from Petsora north to dark Arzina’s shore:—­

   An iron ridge o’erhung with toppling snow
   And giant beards of icicled cascade:—­
   Where, frost-imprison’d as the long mouths go,
   The Good Hope and her mate-ship lay embay’d;
   And those brave crews knew that all hope was gone;
England be seen no more; no more the living sun.

   A store that daily lessens ’neath their eyes;
   A little dole of light and fire and food:—­
   While Night upon them like a vampyre lies
   Bleaching the frame and thinning out the blood;
   And through the ships the frost-bit timbers groan,
And the Guloine prowls round, with dull heart-curdling moan.

   Then sometimes on the soul, far off, how far! 
   Came back the shouting crowds, the cannon-roar,
   The latticed palace glittering like a star,
   The buoyant Thames, the green, sweet English shore,
   The heartful prayers, the fireside blaze and bliss,
The little faces bright, and woman’s last, last kiss.

   —­O yet, for all their misery, happy souls! 
   Happy in faith and love and fortitude:—­
   For you, one thought of England dear controls
   All shrinking of the flesh at death so rude! 
   Though long at rest in that far Arctic grave,
True sailor hero hearts, van of our bravest brave.

   And one by one the North King’s searching lance
   Touch’d, and they stiffen’d at their task, and died;
   And their stout leader glanced a farewell glance;
   ‘God is as close by sea as land,’ he cried,
   ’In His own light not nearer than this gloom,’—­
And look’d as one who o’er the mountains sees his home.

   Home!—­happy sound of vanish’d happiness! 
   —­But when the unwilling sun crept up again,
   And loosed the sea from winter and duresse,
   The seal-wrapt race that roams the Lapland main
   Saw in Arzina, wondering, fearing more,
The tatter’d ships, in snows entomb’d and vaulted o’er: 

   And clomb the decks, and found the gallant crew,
   As forms congeal’d to stone, where frozen fate
   Took each man in his turn, and gently slew:—­
   Nor knew the heroic chieftain, as he sate,
   English through every fibre, in his place,
The smile of duty done upon the steadfast face.

Sir Hugh Willoughby, in the Bona Esperanza, with two other vessels, sailed May 10, 1553, saluting the palace of Greenwich is they passed.  By September 18 he, with one consort, reached the harbour of Arzina, where all perished early in 1554.  His will, dated in January of that year, was found when the ships were discovered by the Russians soon after.