Your speech rings true as your good sword rings--
And you are a king indeed!


DICKENS

"The only book that the party had was a volume of Dickens.
During the six months that they lay in the cave which they
had hacked in the ice, waiting for spring to come, they read
this volume through again and again."--From a newspaper
report of an antarctic expedition.

HUDDLED within their savage lair
They hearkened to the prowling wind;
They heard the loud wings of despair . . .
And madness beat against the mind. . . .
A sunless world stretched stark outside
As if it had cursed God and died;
Dumb plains lay prone beneath the weight
Of cold unutterably great;
Iron ice bound all the bitter seas,
The brutal hills were bleak as hate. . . .
Here none but Death might walk at ease!

Then Dickens spoke, and, lo! the vast
Unpeopled void stirred into life;

The dead world quickened, the mad blast
Hushed for an hour its idiot strife
With nothingness. . . .