You are here
قراءة كتاب Fires - Book II The Ovens, and Other Tales
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
اللغة: English
Fires - Book II The Ovens, and Other Tales
الصفحة رقم: 5
little doubt
She'd set her heart upon a grand
And foolish funeral--for the pride
Of poor folk, who can understand!--
And so, because she was too proud
To meet death penniless, she died."
And talking, talking, they trooped out:
And, as they went, I turned about
To look upon her in her shroud;
And saw again the quiet face
That filled with light that shameful place,
Touched with the tender, youthful grace
Death brings the broken and outworn
To comfort kind hearts left to mourn.
And as I stood, the sum they'd found
Rang with a queer, familiar ring
Of some uncouth, uncanny sound
Heard in dark ages underground;
And "four-pound-seventeen-and-five"
Through all my body seemed to sing,
Without recalling anything
To help me, strive as I might strive.
But, as I stumbled down the stairs
Into the alley's gloom and stench--
A whiff of burning oil
That took me unawares--
And I knew all there was to tell.
And, though the rain in torrents fell,
I walked on, heedless, through the drench
And, all the while, I seemed to sit
Upon a tub in Lansel pit;
And in the candle-light to see
John Askerton, a "deputy,"
Who paused awhile to talk with me,
His kind face glistening black with toil.
"'Twas here I found him dead, beside
His engine. All the other men
Were up--for things were slack just then--
And I'd one foot upon the cage;
When, all at once, I caught the smell
Of burning. Even as I turned
To see what it could be that burned,
The seam behind was choked with stife.
And so I dropped on hands and knees,
And crawled along the gallery,
Beneath the smoke, that I might see
What ailed: and as I crept, half-blind,
With smarting eyes, and breath awheeze,
I scarcely knew what I should find.
At times, I thought I'd never know...
And 'twas already quite an age
Since I set out ... I felt as though
I had been crawling all my life
Beneath the stifling cloud of smoke
That clung about me fit to choke:
And when, at last, I'd struggled here,
'Twas long ere I could see things clear...
That he was lying here ... and he
Was dead ... and burning like a tree...
A tree-trunk soaked in oil ... No doubt,
The engine had caught fire, somehow;
And when he tried to put it out,
His greasy clothes had caught ... and now
As fine a lad as you could see...
And such a lad for singing ... I
Had heard him when I worked hard by;
And often quiet I would sit
To hear him, singing in the pit,
As though his heart knew naught of it,
And life was nothing but a song.
"He'd not been working with us long:
And little of his ways I knew:
But, when I'd got him up, at last;
And he was lying in the shed,
The sweet song silent in his breast;
And there was nothing more to do:
The notion came into my head
That he had always been well-dressed;
And seemed a neat and thrifty lad...
And lived in lodgings ... so, maybe,
Would carry on him all he had.
So, back into the cage I stepped:
And, when it reached the bottom, crept
Along the gallery again
And, in the dust where he had lain,
I rummaged, until I found all
That from his burning pockets fell.
And when it seemed there was no more,
I thought how, happy and alive,
And recking naught what might befall,
He, too, for all that I could tell,
Just where I stood, had reckoned o'er
That four-pound-seventeen-and-five.
"Aye, like enough ... for soon we heard
That in a week he'd looked to wed.
He'd meant to give the girl that night
The money to buy furniture.
She came, and watched till morning-light
Beside the body in the shed:
Then rose: and took, without a word,
The money he had left for her."
* * * * *
Then, as I wandered through the rain,I seemed to stand in awe againBeside that lonely garret-bed.And it was good to think the deadHad known the wealth she would not spend