Antarctica

Vance’s recitation of this parody poem really is a delight:

THE PROTOPLASMIC CYCLE
Big floes have little floes all around about ’em, And all the yellow diatoms couldn’t do without ’em.
Forty million shrimplets feed upon the latter, And they make the penguin and the seals and whales
Much fatter.
Along comes the Orca and kills these down below, While up above the Afterguard attack them on the floe:
And if a sailor tumbles in and stoves the mushy pack in, He’s crumpled up between the floes, and so they get their whack in.
Then there’s no doubt he soon becomes a patent fertilizer, invigorating diatoms, although they’re none the wiser,
So the protoplasm passes on its never-ceasing round, Like a huge recurring decimal … to which no end is found.

From “The Antarctic Exploration Anthology: The Personal Accounts of the Great Antarctic Explorers (Bybliotech Discovery Book 1)” by Ernest Shackleton, Robert Falcon Scott, Roald Amundsen, Douglas Mawson, Apsley Cherry-Garrard)