Читать книгу The Searchlights - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 9

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Beside the friendly and yet alien

Hearthstone he watches the memory-kindling blaze

Of logs from English woodlands, in a daze

Through which he sees his fellowcountrymen

Still struggle in the horror of the night

That closed about them when in a black hour

Their rulers, crazy with the lust of power

And dominance, turned traitor to the light.

He sees his friends and those of his own kind

Caught in the toils, friends who had failed to flee

And in another land seek sanctuary

From the implacable murderers of the mind

And torturers of the body, failed, or scorned,

Scorned to forsake their country in its duress.

And now his heart is searched with bitterness

To think that he, in his despair suborned

By the seductive lure of freedom, fled

And left them to sustain the agony

And carry on the fight stoutheartedly

Without his aid.

Freedom! None but the dead

Who died for honour’s sake and those who yet

In prison or concentration-camp endured,

Still resolute under torture, could be assured

Of freedom in a reeling world, beset

By all the powers of darkness. His body, free,

Had in his own land left his spirit bound

And helpless.

And now in the crackling sound

And blaze of the logs he can only hear and see

Far off the city of his heart’s desire,

His native town, beneath the midnight sky

Flaring to heaven, as over it there fly

Avenging furies scattering cleansing fire.