Читать книгу The Searchlights - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 3

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Crouched by the rear-gun, his reluctant mind

Fails to relinquish all he leaves behind,

As through the cloudbank towards Italy

The aircraft flies; and clearly he can see,

Suffusing the blank vapour’s prisoning gloom,

The firelight of the old familiar room

Flicker with lively amber flames that light

The faces round the hearthstone he last night

Dared scarcely glance at, lest those loving eyes,

Meeting his own, should happen to surprise

The fear within his breast, the fear that still

Clutched at his midriff with foreboding, till,

Leaving the tarmac with impatient roar,

The craft took off, and, in the air once more,

Despair fell from him as life raced again

With its old urgency through every vein

And the cold hollow that had been his heart

When he from all he loved had come to part

Once more was charged with courage impetuously

Beating out its old eager rhythm.

And now he

Could look into the firelit room to-night

With confidence and even meet the bright

Eyes of his wife and children. For it seemed

The vision that on the cloudbank glowed and gleamed

With golden fervor was assuredly

An earnest of his safe return, that he

Should make the happy landing once again.

And now from out the muffling mist the plane

Emerges into naked cold moonlight;

And, looking down, he sees the mapped-out white

Ice-lustred Alpine ranges sheer below,

Relieved that into some crevasse’s snow

It will not be his lot to crash, and lie

A frozen corpse through all eternity.