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BRITISH NATIONAL ANTARCTIC EXPEDITION, 1901-1904 -- ERNEST HENRY SHACKLETON (1874-1922)
Autograph manuscript signed ('Ernest H. Shackleton') of his poem 'L'Envoi', this copy undated but c.1907, annotated at foot 'The last Rhyme in the South Polar Times written on the Southern Sledge Journey Dec 1902', 1½ pages, 4to, on paper with printed heading of British Antarctic Expedition 1907 (minor foxing, pin holes). Provenance: by descent from Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton to the present owner. Literature: M. and J. Fisher, Shackleton, London, 1957, pp.500-01. Exhibited: Dulwich, Shackleton, the Antarctic and Endurance, Dulwich College, 2000, no.32 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p.70).
'We shall dream of those months of sledging through soft and yielding snow;
The chafe of the strap on the shoulder; the whine of the dogs as they go.
Our rest in the tent after marching; our sleep in the biting cold;
The Heavens now grey with the snow cloud, anon to be burnished gold;
The threshing drift on the tent exposed to the blizzard's might;
The wind-blown furrows and snow drifts; the crystal's play in the light ...'
'Shackleton's most ambitious attempt to sum up the feelings which the Antarctic had called forth in him' (Fisher, op. cit.). 'L'Envoi' was, as Shackleton notes here, printed at the end of the last number of the South Polar Times in August 1903, over the signature NEMO, six months after Shackleton himself had controversially been invalided home. With its invocations of 'this weird and wondrous region' dreamt of from amongst 'English meadows 'mid the scent of English flowers', it is one of the texts most profoundly representative of Shackleton's spirit as an explorer.
Autograph manuscript signed ('Ernest H. Shackleton') of his poem 'L'Envoi', this copy undated but c.1907, annotated at foot 'The last Rhyme in the South Polar Times written on the Southern Sledge Journey Dec 1902', 1½ pages, 4to, on paper with printed heading of British Antarctic Expedition 1907 (minor foxing, pin holes). Provenance: by descent from Sir Ernest Henry Shackleton to the present owner. Literature: M. and J. Fisher, Shackleton, London, 1957, pp.500-01. Exhibited: Dulwich, Shackleton, the Antarctic and Endurance, Dulwich College, 2000, no.32 (illustrated in the exhibition catalogue, p.70).
'We shall dream of those months of sledging through soft and yielding snow;
The chafe of the strap on the shoulder; the whine of the dogs as they go.
Our rest in the tent after marching; our sleep in the biting cold;
The Heavens now grey with the snow cloud, anon to be burnished gold;
The threshing drift on the tent exposed to the blizzard's might;
The wind-blown furrows and snow drifts; the crystal's play in the light ...'
'Shackleton's most ambitious attempt to sum up the feelings which the Antarctic had called forth in him' (Fisher, op. cit.). 'L'Envoi' was, as Shackleton notes here, printed at the end of the last number of the South Polar Times in August 1903, over the signature NEMO, six months after Shackleton himself had controversially been invalided home. With its invocations of 'this weird and wondrous region' dreamt of from amongst 'English meadows 'mid the scent of English flowers', it is one of the texts most profoundly representative of Shackleton's spirit as an explorer.