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قراءة كتاب Fires - Book I The Stone, and Other Tales
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Fires - Book I The Stone, and Other Tales
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FIRES - BOOK I
FIRES
BOOK I
THE STONE, AND OTHER TALES
BY
WILFRID WILSON GIBSON
LONDON
ELKIN MATHEWS, VIGO STREET
M CM XII
BY THE SAME WRITER
DAILY BREAD (1910)
WOMENKIND (1912)
TO
GEORGE CLAUSEN
A TRIBUTE
Snug in my easy chair,
I stirred the fire to flame.
Fantastically fair,
The flickering fancies came.
Born of hearts desire:
Amber woodland streaming;
Topaz islands dreaming;
Sunset-cities gleaming,
Spire on burning spire;
Ruddy-windowed taverns;
Sunshine-spilling wines;
Crystal-lighted caverns
Of Golconda's mines;
Summers, unreturning;
Passion's crater yearning;
Troy, the ever-burning;
Shelley's lustral pyre;
Dragon-eyes, unsleeping;
Witches' cauldrons leaping;
Golden galleys sweeping
Out from sea-walled Tyre:
Fancies, fugitive and fair,
Flashed with singing through the air;
Till, dazzled by the drowsy glare,
I shut my eyes to heat and light;
And saw, in sudden night,
Crouched in the dripping dark,
With steaming shoulders stark,
The man who hews the coal to feed my fire.
CONTENTS
The Stone
The Wife
The Machine
The Lodestar
The Shop
Flannan Isle
The Brothers
The Blind Rower
The Flute
Thanks are due to the editors of THE ENGLISH REVIEW, THE POETRY REVIEW and THE SPECTATOR for leave to reprint some of these tales.
FIRES
THE STONE
"And will you cut a stone for him,To set above his head?And will you cut a stone for him--A stone for him?" she said.Three days before, a splintered rockHad struck her lover dead--Had struck him in the quarry dead,Where, careless of the warning call,He loitered, while the shot was fired--A lively stripling, brave and tall,And sure of all his heart desired...A flash, a shock,A rumbling fall...And, broken 'neath the broken rock,A lifeless heap, with face of clay,And still as any stone he lay,With eyes that saw the end of all.I went to break the news to her:And I could hear my own heart beatWith dread of what my lips might sayBut, some poor fool had sped before;And, flinging wide her father's door,Had blurted out the news to her,Had struck her lover dead for her,Had struck the girl's heart dead in her,Had struck life, lifeless, at a word,And dropped it at her feet:Then hurried on his witless way,Scarce knowing she had heard.