Читать книгу Hazards - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 10

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Somehow to-night

Unending, the familiar corridor

That he must travel to his room—

Unending, and familiar now no more,

And strangely filled with gloom ...

Flight after flight

Of stairs he’d climbed with gasping breath;

And now, ’twould seem, that, weak and faint,

He had to pause awhile before

Ancestor after painted ancestor,

The generations of his fathers gone

Before him down to death—

To pause and peer until the paint

Flaked off; and in each frame there shone

An incandescent skeleton of white

And naked bone that grinned him a Good-night!

But when he reached the end and came at last

To his own father’s portrait, it he passed

With eyes averted, fearing to discern

Even in that kind face

The grin of mockery:

For well he knew that never he

His faltering footsteps should retrace ...

Though at a solemn, slow, unfaltering pace

Past each poor paint-and-canvas ancestor,

Frail fading relics of his once proud race,

He should return

Once more,

Borne shoulder-high, along the corridor.