Solway Ford

HE greets you with a smile from friendly eyes;

But never speaks, nor rises from his bed:

Beneath the green night of the sea he lies,

The whole world's waters weighing on his head.

The empty wain made slowly over the sand;

And he, with hands in pockets by the side

Was trudging, deep in dream, the while he scanned

With blue, unseeing eyes the far-off tide:

When, stumbling in a hole, wiyth startled neigh,

His young horse reared, and, snatching at the rein,

He slipped: the wheels crushed on him as he lay;

Then, tilting over him, the lumbering wain

Turned turtle as theplunging beast broke free,

And made for home: and pinioned and half-dead

He lay, and listened to the far-off sea;

And seemed to hear it surging overhead

Already, though 'twas full an hour or more

Until high-tide, when Solway's shining flood

Should sweep the shallow firth from shore to shore.

He felt a salty tingle in his blood;

And seemed to stifle, drowning. Then again,

he knew that he must lie a lingering while

Before the sea might close above his pain,

Although the advancing waves had scarce a mile

To travel, creeping nearer, inch by inch,

With little runs and sallies over the sand.

Cooped in the dark, he felt his body flinch

From each cold wave as it drew nearer hand.

He saw the froth of each oncoming crest;

And felt the tugging of the ebb and flow,

And waves already breaking over his breast;

Though still far-off they murmured, faint and low;

Yet, creeping nearer, inch by inch, and now

He felt the cold drench of the drowning wave,

And the salt cold of lips and brow;

And sank, and sank . . . while still, as ina grave,

In the close dark beneath the crushing cart,

He lay, and listened to the far-off sea.

Wave after wave was knocking at his heart,

And swishing, swishing, swishing carelessly

About the wain -- cool waves that never reached

His cracking lips, to slake his hell-hot thirst . . .

Shrill in his ear a startled barn-owl screeched . . .

He smelt the smell of oil-cake . . . when there burst,

Through the big barn's wide-open door, the sea --

The whole sea sweeping on him with a roar . . .

He clutched a falling rafter, dizzily . . .

Then sank through drowning deeps, to rise no more.

Down, ever down, a hundred years he sank

Through cold green death, ten thousand fathoms deep.

His fiery lips deep draughts of cold sea drank

That filled his body with strange icy sleep,

Until he felt no longer that numb ache,

The dead-weight lifted from his legs at last:

And yet, he gazed with wondering eyes awake

Up the green glassy gloom through which he passed:

And saw, far overhead, the keels of ships

Grow smaller and smaller,dwindling out of sight;

And watched the bubbles rising from his lips;

And silver salmon swimming in green night;

And queer big, golden bream with scarlet fins

And emerald eyes and fiery-flashing tails;

Enormous eels with purple-spotted skins;

And mammoth unknown fish with sapphire scales

That bore down on him with red jaws agape,

Like yawning furnaces of blinding heat;

And when it seemed to him as though escape

From those hell-mouths were hopeless, his bare feet

Touched bottom: and he lay down in his place

Among the dreamless legion of the drowned,

The calm of deeps unsounded on his face,

And calm within his heart; while all around

Upon the midmost ocean's crystal floor

The naked bodies of dead seamen lay,

Dropped, sheer and clean, from hubbub, brawl and roar,

To peace, too deep for any tide to sway.

.   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .   .

The little waves were lapping round the cart

Already, when they rescued him from death.

Life cannot touch the quiet of his heart

To joy or sorrow, as, with easy breath,

And smiling lips upon his back he lies,

And never speaks, nor rises from his bead;

Gazing through those green glooms with happy eyes,

While gold and sapphire fish swim overhead.

Wilfred Gibson

Geraniums

STUCK in a bottle on the window-sill,

In the cold gaslight burning gaily red

Against the luminous blue of London night,

These flowers are mine: while somewhere out of sight

In some black-throated alley's stench and heat,

Oblivious of the racket of the street,

A poor old weary woman lies in bed.

Broken with lust and drink, blear-eyed and ill,

Her battered bonnet nodding on her head,

From a dark door she clutched my sleeve and said:

"I've sold no bunch to-day, nor touched a bite . . .

Son, buy six-penn'orth; and 'till mean a bed."

So, blazing gaily red

Against the luminous deeps

Of starless London night,

They burn for my delight:

While somewhere, snug in bed,

A worn old woman sleeps.

And yet to-morrow will these blooms be dead

With all their lively beauty; and to-morrow

may end the light lusts and the heavy sorrow

Of that old body with the nodding head.

The last oath uttered, the last pint drained deep,

She'll sink, as Cleopatra sank, to sleep;

Nor need to barter blossoms for a bed.

Wilfred Gibson

The Whisperers

As beneath the moon I walked,

Dog-at-heel, my shadow stalked,

Keeping ghostly company:

And as we went gallantly

Down the fell-road, dusty-white,

Round us in the windy night

Bracken, rushes, bent and heather

Whispered ceaselessly together:

"Would he ever journey more,

Ever stride so carelessly:

If he knew what lies before,

And could see what we can see?"

As I listened, cold with dread,

Every hair upon my head

Strained to hear them talk of me,

Whispering, whispering ceaselessly:

"Folly's fool the man must be,

Surely, since, though where he goes

He knows not, his shadow knows:

And his secret shadow never

Utters warning words, or ever

Seeks to save him from his fate,

Reckless, blindfold, and unknown,

Till death tells him all, too late,

And his shadow walks alone."

Wilfred Gibson

The Lodging House

WHEN up the fretful, creaking stair,

From floor to floor

I creep

On tiptoe, lest I wake from their first beauty-sleep

The unknown lodgers lying, layer on layer,

In the packed house from roof to basement

Behind each landings unseen door;

The well-known steps are strangely steep,

And the old stairway seems to soar,

For my amazement

Hung in air,

Flight on flight

Through pitchy night,

Evermore and evermore.

And when at last I stand outside

My garret-door I hardly dare

To open it,

Lest, when I fling it wide,

With candle lit

And reading in my only chair,

I find myself already there . . .

And so must crawl down the sheer black pit

Of hell's own stair,

Past lodgers sleeping layer on layer,

To seek a home I know not where.

Wilfred Gibson

The Ice

HER day out from the workhouse-ward, she stands,

A grey-haired woman, decent and precise,

With prim black bonnet and neat paisley shawl,

Among the other children by the stall;

And with grave relish eats a penny ice.

To wizened toothless gums, with quaking hands

She holds it, shuddering with deliscious cold;

Nor heeds the jeering laughter of young men --

The happiest, in her innocense, of all:

For, while their insolent youth must soon grow old,

She, who's been old, is now a child again.

Wilfred Gibson

Woolgathering

YOUTH that goes woolgathering,

Mooning and stargazing,

Always finding everything

Full of fresh amazing,

Best will meet the moment's need

When the dream brings forth the deed.

He who keeps through all his days

Open eyes of wonder

Is the lord of skiey ways,

And the earth thereunder:

For the heart to do and sing

Comes of youth's woolgathering.

Wilfred Gibson

In a Restaurant

HE wears a red rose in his buttonhole,

A city-clerk on Sunday dining out:

And as the music surges over the din

The heady quavering of the violin

Sings through his blood, and puts old cares to rout,

And tingles, quickening, through his shrunken soul,

Till he forgets he ledgers, and the prim

Black, crabbèd figures, and the qualmy smell

Of ink and musty leather and leadglaze,

As, in eternities of Summer days,

He dives through shivering waves, or rides the swell

On rose-red seas of melody aswim.

Wilfred Gibson

Before Action

I SIT beside the brazier's glow,

And, drowsing in the heat,

A dream of daffodils that blow

And lambs that frisk and bleat--

Black lambs that frolic in the snow

Among the daffodils,

In a far orchard that I know

Beneath the Malvern hills.

Next year the daffodils will blow,

And lambs will frisk and bleat;

But I'll not feel the the brazier's glow,

Nor any cold or heat.

Wilfred Gibson

Breakfast

WE ate our breakfast lying on our backs,

Because the shells were screeching overhead.

I bet a rasher to a loaf of bread

That Hull United would beat Halifax

When Jimmy Strainthorpe played full-back instead

Of Billy Bradford. Ginger raised his head

And cursed, and took the bet; and dropt back dead.

We ate our breakfast lying on our backs,

Because the shells were screeching overhead.

Wilfred Gibson

The Question

I WONDER if the old cow died or not.

Gey bad she was the night I left, and sick.

Dick reconed she would mend. He knows a lot--

At least he fancies so himself, does Dick.

Dick knows a lot. But maybe I did wrong

To leave the cow to him, and come away.

Over and over like a silly song

These words keep bumming in my head all day.

And all I think of, as I face the foe

And take my lucky chance of being shot,

Is this -- that if I'm hit, I'll never know

Till Doomsday if the old cow died or not.

Wilfred Gibson

The Return

HE went, and he was gay to go;

And I smiled on him as he went.

My son, 'twas well he couldn't know

My darkest dread, nor what it meant--

Just what it meant to smile and smile

And let my son go cheerily--

My son . . . and wondering all the while

What stranger would come back to me.

Wilfred Gibson

The Raining

THE night I left my father said:

"You'll go and do some stupid thing.

You've no more sense in that fat head

Than silly Billy Witterling.

"Not sense to come in when it rains--

Not sense enough for that, you've got.

You'll get a bullet through your brains,

Before you know, as like as not."

And now I'm lying in the trench

And shells and bullets through the night

Are raining in a steady drench,

I'm thinking the old man was right.

Wilfred Gibson

Hill-Born

I SOMETIMES wonder if it's really true

I ever knew

Another life

Than this unending strife

With unseen enemies in lowland mud,

And wonder if my blood

Thrilled ever to the tune

Of clean winds blowing through an April noon

Mile after sunny mile

On the green ridges of the Windy Gile.

Wilfred Gibson

Comrades

AS I was marching in Flanders

A ghost kept step with me--

Kept step with me and chuckled

And muttered ceaselessly:

"Once I too marched in Flanders,

The very spit of you,

And just a hundred years since,

To fall at Waterloo.

"They buried me in Flanders

Upon the field of blood,

And long I've lain forgotten

Deep in the Flemmish mud.

"But now you march in Flanders,

The very spit of me;

To the ending of the day's march

I'll bear you company."

Wilfred Gibson

Back

THEY ask me where I've been,

And what I've done and seen.

But what can I reply

Who know it wasn't I,

But someone just like me,

Who went across the sea

And with my head and hands

Killed men in foreign lands . . .

Though I must bear the blame

Because he bore my name.

Wilfred Gibson

Cherries

A HANDFUL of cherries

She gave me in passing,

The wizened old woman,

And wished me good luck--

And again I was dreaming,

A boy in the sunshine,

And life but an orchard

Of cherries to pluck.

Wilfred Gibson