Tennants

SUDDENLY, out of dark and leafy ways,

We came upon the little house asleep

In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep,

In the white magic of the full moon-blaze:

Strangers without the grate, we stood agaze,

Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep

Into the house that had been ours to keep

Through a long year of happy nights and days.

So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam,

So old and ghostly like a house of dream

It seemed, that over us there stole the dread

That even as we watched it, side by side,

The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died

Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.

Wilfred Gibson

Gold

ALL day long the mallet thudded, far below

My garret, in an old ramshackle shed

Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head

And rigid motions ever to and fro

A figure like a puppet in a show

Before the window moved till day was dead,

Beating out gold to earn his daily bread,

beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow by blow.

And I within my garret all day long

To that unceasing thudding tuned my song,

Beating out golden words in tune and time

To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme.

But in my dreams all night in that dark shed

With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread.

Wilfred Gibson

The Orphans

A T five o'clock one April morn

I met them making tracks,

Young Benjamin and Abel Horn,

With bundles on their backs.

Young Benjamin is seventy-five,

Young Abel, seventy-seven,

The oldest innocents alive

Beneath the April Heaven.

I asked them why they trudged about

With crabby looks and sour--

"And does your mother know you're out

At this unearthly hour?"

They stopped: and scowling up at me

Each shook a grizzled head,

And swore, and then spat bitterly,

As with one voive they said:

"Homeless, about the country-side

We never thought to roam;

But mother, she has gone and died,

And broken up the home."

Wilfred Gibson

Roses

RED roses floating in a crystal bowl

You bring, O love; and in your eyes I see,

Blossom on blossom, your warm love of me

Burning within your crystal soul--

Red roses floating in a crystal bowl.

Wilfred Gibson

The Ice-Cart

PERCHED on my city office-stool,

I watched with envy, while a cool

And lucky carter handled ice. . . .

And I was wandering in a trice,

Far from the grey and grimy heat

Of that intolerable street,

O'er a sapphire berg and emerald floe,

Beneath the still, cold ruby glow

Of everlasting Polar night,

Bewildered by the queer half-light,

Until I stumbled, unawares,

Upon a creek where big white bears

Plunged headlong down with flourished heels

And floundered after shining seals

Through shivering seas of blinding blue.

And as I watched them, ere I knew,

I'd stripped, and I was swimming too,

Among the sea-pack, young and hale,

And thrusting on with threshing tail,

With twist and twirl and sudden leap

Through crackling ice and salty deep--

Diving and doubling with my kind,

Until, at last, we left behind

Those big, white, blundering bulks of death,

And lay, at length, with panting breath

Upon a far untravelled floe,

Beneath a gentle drift of snow--

Snow drifting gently, fine and white,

Out of the endless Polar night,

Falling and falling evermore

Upon that far untravelled shore,

Till I was buried fathoms deep

Beneath the cold white drifting sleep--

Sleep drifting deep,

Deep drifting sleep. . . .

The carter cracked a sudden whip:

I clutched my stool with startled grip.

Awakening to the grimy heat

Of that intolerable street.

Wilfred Gibson