Читать книгу Hazards - Wilfrid Wilson Gibson - Страница 9

Table of Contents

She switched her torch on in that shadowed place;

And, startled, saw a strained and staring face,

Dead white against a tree-trunk, where he stood

Stiller than any tree in that dark wood,

A stranger with the look of one whose sight

May never know the darkness from the light,

Whose blank unblinking eyes, though unaware

Of her existence even, appeared to stare

Right through her body till she seemed almost

To dwine beneath their spell into a ghost,

A wispy vapour floating in the air ...

She dropped the torch: and daybreak found her there

Alone and senseless underneath the trees:

But soon the kindly light and freshening breeze

Revived her; and she rose to go her way.

Yet even in the ardent blaze of day

She shivered; and her heart could not forget

Those blind unblenching eyes upon her set

With an unseeing gaze that seemed to see

Sheer though the veil of her mortality:

And hour by hour life dwindled till she seemed

The ghost of her own self; and children screamed,

Suddenly coming on her in the shade,

And scuttled homeward trembling and afraid,

While she pressed onward through the failing light

To seek the stranger in the wood’s deep night.