One cold grey stone of granite with six names,
four sides chiseled with your births and
deaths.
Your passing like your living, without fame,
Your speech remembered through your frozen
breath.

The church you helped construct before
the voyage
was there to receive you, still incomplete.
Each person brought his chair and with deep
rage
Mourned lives so quickly ended in defeat.

You departed eager for the ice floes;
“in the fat” would be your triumphant cry.
You laughed at shifting ice and frozen toes;
Your vision of a bumper trip ran high.

One thing you lacked in your preparation,
One thing important you did not see.
The ship’s owners, in their calculations
saw the seal, not you, as their bigger fee.

They brought you into port piled high
on deck,
Three of you frozen in each others grasp.
Your bond even this cruel death could not
wreck,
Words of valour ceasing, at peace, at last.

Edward, twenty-four, frozen in cold stone
with Norman, twenty-four; George, thirty-five;
Abel, fifty-six; William, thirty-one;
Chiseled with Theophilus, seventeen.

Samuel Johnson
St. John’s, NL