Poet E.J. Pratt Born

Birth of E.J. Pratt Feb 4, 1882 

- Poet Edwin John Pratt was born at Western Bay, Nfld

Pratt, E.J. Poet E.J. Pratt, c 1930* "Clcik for credit and enlarge photo.

The Ground Swell

by E.J. Pratt

Three times we heard it calling with a low,

Insistent note; at ebb-tide on the noon;

And at the hour of dusk, when the red moon

Was rising and the tide was on the flow;

Then, at the hour of midnight once again,

Though we had entered in and shut the door

And drawn the blinds, it crept up from the shore

And smote upon a bedroom window-pane;

Then passed away as some dull pang that grew

Out of the void before Eternity

Had fashioned out an edge for human grief;

Before the winds of God had learned to strew

His harvest-sweepings on a winter sea

To feed the primal hungers of a reef.

The schooner President Coaker s ran aground, January 1924, at Shoe Cove near Cape Ballard (about ninety kilometres south of St. John's). The schooner was completely destroyed and her crew of six were lost at sea. No bodies were ever recovered.  "Click" for Photo Credit and enlarge.

Poem