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C J Dennis - The Impervious Iceberg
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I saw him stand, a Polar man,
   Cold anger in his frigid eye,
Facing it wild, unruly clan
   Who poised their fiery shafts on high.

Strangely, his very coldness fed
   The angry flame `gainst such as he;
For in his wintry face they read
   Antarctic immobility.

The niveous hauteur of that face
   Bespoke the brumal inner man;
And, in its chill hyemal grace,
   His pose was quite Siberian.

His haughty and hibernal gaze
   Seemed like twin icicles to strike.
The whole man was, in many ways,
   Peculiarly cucumber-like.

His algid and unruffled brow
   Gleamed frostily, and, as he eyed
His raging foes, he seemed, I vow,
   Gelidity personified.

His Greenland bosom bulged with pride:
   A manly bosom `twas withal -
And, as he breathed, with glacial glide
   I watched his waistcoat rise and fall.

I marked the Arctic arrogance
   With which he faced his foemen bold.
Bleak was his mien; clay-cold his glance.
   Some vowed his very feet were cold.

I saw his savage foemen poise
   Their fiery javelins on high.
(They made a fearful lot of noise.)
   "Slay!  Slay the Iceberg!" was the cry.

And then, as by a single hand
   Propelled, I saw the keen shafts fly,
And on that manly bosom land.
   "This is his funeral," thought I.

Nay, by my halidaine!  What`s this?
   Upon his breast the hot shafts beat,
But with a fierce and baffled hiss
   Drop all innocuous at his feet.

Unscathed he stood, the Man of Ice.
   Each shaft, with torrid anger fired,
Just spluttered feebly once or twice,
   Then ignominiously expired.

One look he gave them, that was all -
   It made his shiv`ring foemen feel
That wintry blasts swept through the hall -
   Then turned on his hyemal heel.

One word he spake, one icy word -
   No man among them stood exempt -
It froze each listener who heard
   With hyperborean contempt.

It froze them with its brumal blast;
   Like avalanches there it rang.
Then through the door he calmly passed,
   And banged it with a snow-clad bang.

So, frigidly, he won the day.
   And, when the blizzard blast was o`er,
Lo, nought remained to mark the fray
   But shafts, deceased, upon the floor.

And, as I passed into the night,
   I heard one baffled foe aver:
"`Tis sheer futility to fight
   An iceberg with a Lucifer!"
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