I am the albatross

In 1992, on a hilltop of Horn Island, a monument to the memory of the mariners lost in the waters off Cape Horn was erected, financed with both public and private funds from Chile and many other countries. The interior outline of its facing steel sheets form the image of a wandering albatross in flight; a nearby marble plaque is inscribed with a Spanish poem by Chilean Sara Vial:

I am the albatross that waits for you

at the end of the world.

I am the forgotten souls of dead mariners

who passed Cape Horn

from all the oceans of the earth.

But they did not die

in the furious waves.

Today they sail on my wings

toward eternity,

in the last crack

of Antarctic winds.

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening

BY ROBERT FROST

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

Robert Frost, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright 1923, © 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, Inc., renewed 1951, by Robert Frost. Reprinted with the permission of Henry Holt and