Читать книгу The Searchlights - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 10

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From his high station on the Great Whin Sill

In a milecastle of the Roman Wall

Watching the dim fells dreaming in the still

Tender Spring moonshine, now he hears the call

Of courting curlew from a nearby syke

Answered by crake of wild-duck and the scream

Of seagull nesting on far Hallypike.

And, as he listens, still alert to hear

The approach of enemy aircraft, in a half-dream

He gazes at the rippling shimmer and gleam

Of light on Broomlee Lough; and thinks of all

The fighting and the fury and the fear

These Northern wastes have known since time began—

Forgotten tribes of prehistoric man

Warring with wolves and their own wolf-like kind:

The ancient Picts, stemming the Northward sweep

Of Roman cohorts on this very steep,

Storming and harrying year after year,

Until at length the legions were withdrawn

Southward in panic, summoned in headlong haste

Back to the succour of their mother Rome,

Or, battleworn deserters, they strayed to find

And settle in some peaceful British home:

The coming of the Saxons; and the hordes

Of Vikings sallying inland from the coast

Time and again in many a bloody dawn

From their beached longboats, host on murderous host

With wide-winged helms and bitter-biting swords.

The Normans in baulked anger laying waste

The hills and dales of all Northumberland:

The longdrawn civil conflicts breaking out

Through the ensuing centuries till the last

Forlorn adventure of the Jacobites:

And, always, startling the dark Northern nights

With fiery forays, the Border reiving clans.

And, recollecting how these fells have been

Bloodsoaked so often and how these hills have seen

Defeat and victory and foes put to rout

Or vanquished in a last heroic stand

Times out of mind; and wondering at man’s

Insatiable lust for killing, his heart is filled,

As in the haunted night he watches alone,

With dire despair, to think that now the whole

World seethes in insensate slaughter fiercer far

Than even these Border battlefields have known

Through their long history of futile strife;

And every instant under sun and star

Cities are stormed and men in thousands killed,

And all the hardwon ideals of man’s soul

In shattering disaster overthrown;

While, caught in the blind frenzy, such men as he

Who only asked to lead a peaceful life

And be allowed to cultivate and build

For future generations now should be

Compelled, by total annihilation faced,

To join in the destruction, and lay waste

Their best years, waging war with their own kind.

And, even as he stares into the blind

And ominous future, he marks the hostile drone

Of Westward-flying planes from oversea.