Waves are crashing against the mountain’s feet,
As the sun fades deep in the horizon’s plate,
The time is plunging into the darkness’ right,
Clouds and sky are black all alike,
Eternal spots of starry heaven are all alight.
Do not fear for the darkness all around,
Rage, rage into the night without abound,
Edge of the night shall fall again,
Far, far away, in the horizon’s end,
Anew sun shall rise again.
All that is covered in the shadow and mist,
Grey spanned meadow and land ahead,
Withered are all, ice that covers the past,
Thousand bodies and souls buried in the land,
Red is the snow now, reminds us of that.
Moving ahead, far beyond one’s limit,
So much death, so much pain,
All that endured here was in silence,
When your opponent is nature’s might,
What can you do for such reckless hate?
One by one, the count was lost,
There was no hope for the sun’s rebound,
When you tell the story of us,
Remind them of the cruelty suffered,
Not that of nature, but of the mind of men.
I wrote half of this long ago, but recently I came to know about the fate of HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, whose last voyage known as Franklin’s lost expedition ended in peril with all hands lost. That story reminds me of the part and let me continue to finish it.