Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

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Wings

As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool

Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet

Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set

In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool,

Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir

Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame

To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her

Into my brooding stagnant being came.

And all my senses quickened into life,

Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire

Sang through my singing blood in eager strife

Until through crystal airs we seemed to be

Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire

Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea.

The Parrots

Somewhere, somewhen I've seen,

But where or when I'll never know,

Parrots of shrilly green

With crests of shriller scarlet flying

Out of black cedars as the sun was dying

Against the cold peaks of snow.

From what forgotten life

Of other worlds I cannot tell

Flashes that screeching strife;

Yet the shrill colour and shrill crying

Sing through my blood and set my heart replying

And jangling like a bell.

The Cakewalk

In smoky lamplight of a Smyrna cafè,

He saw them, seven solemn negroes dancing,

With faces rapt and out-thrust bellies prancing

In a slow solemn ceremonial cakewalk,

Dancing and prancing to the sombre tom-tom

Thumped by a crookbacked grizzled negro squatting.

And as he watched . . . within the steamy twilight

Of swampy forest in rank greenness rotting,

That sombre tom-tom at his heartstrings strumming

Set all his sinews twitching, and a singing

Of cold fire through his blood -- and he was dancing

Among his fellows in the dank green twilight

With naked, oiled, bronze-gleaming bodies swinging

In a rapt holy everlasting cakewalk

For evermore in slow procession prancing.

Driftwood

Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames,

Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues,

And all the innumerable ever-changing hues

That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names,

Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight:

And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery,

The unfathomed cold salt magic of the sea,

Shines clear before us in the quiet night.

We knew the secret that Ulysses sought,

That moonstruck mariners since time began

Snatched at a drowning hazard -- strangely brought

To our homekeeping hearts in drifting spars

We chanced to kindle under the cold stars --

The secret in the ocean-heart of man.

Quiet

Only the footprints of the partridge run

Over the billowy drifts on the mountain-side;

And now on level wings the brown birds glide

Following the snowy curves, and in the sun

Bright birds of gold above the stainless white

They move, and as the pale blue shadows move,

With them my heart glides on in golden flight

Over the hills of quiet to my love.

Storm-shaken, racked with terror through the long

Tempestuous night, in the quiet blue of morn

Love drinks the crystal airs, and peace newborn

Within his troubled heart, on wings aglow

Soars into rapture, as from the quiet snow

The golden birds; and out of silence, song.

Reveille

Still bathed in its moonlight slumber, the little white house by the cedar

Stands silent against the red dawn;

And nothing I know of who sleeps there, to the travail of day yet unwakened,

Behind the blue curtains undrawn:

But I dream as we march down the roadway, ringing loud and white-rimed in the moonlight,

Of a little dark house on a hill

Wherein when the battle is over, to the rapture of day yet unwakened

We shall slumber as dreamless and still.

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