Worlds

Through the pale green forest of tall bracken-stalks,
Whose interwoven fronds, a jade-green sky,
Above me glimmer, infinitely high,
Towards my giant hand a beetle walks
In glistening emerald mail; and as I lie
Watching his progress through huge grassy blades
And over pebble boulders, my own world fades
And shrinks to the vision of a beetle's eye.

Within that forest world of twilight green
Ambushed with unknown perils, one endless day
I travel down the beetle-trail between
Huge glossy boles through green infinity ...
Till flashes a glimpse of blue sea through the bracken asway,
And my world is again a tumult of windy sea.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson was a British Georgian poet, known for his early association with Rupert Brooke and other poets like Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves. His works primarily dealt with the lives of ordinary people and reflected the grim realities of war. He is also recognized for his contribution to the war poetry genre, capturing the human cost of conflict with stark realism and empathy.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

The Going

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

Battle

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

Reveille

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

Lament

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Glow-Worm

The pale road winds faintly upward into the dark skies,
And beside it on the rough grass that the wind invisibly stirs,
Sheltered by sharp-speared gorse and the berried junipers,
Shining steadily with a green light, the glow-worm lies.

We regard it; and this hill and all the other hills
That fall in folds to the river, very smooth and steep,
And the hangers and brakes that the darkness thickly fills
Fade like phantoms round the light, and night is deep, so deep, -

That all the world is emptiness about the still flame,
And we are small shadows standing lost in the huge night.
We gather up the glow-worm, stooping with dazzled sight,
And carry it to the little enclosed garden whence we came,

And place it on the short grass. Then the shadowy flowers fade,
The w...

Edward Shanks

The World

I wish this world and its green hills were mine,
But it is not; the wandering shepherd star
Is not more distant, gazing from afar
On the unreapèd pastures of the sea,
Than I am from the world, the world from me.
At night the stars on milky way that shine
Seem things one might possess, but this round green
Is for the cows that rest, these and the sheep:
To them the slopes and pastures offer sleep;
My sleep I draw from the far fields of blue,
Whence cold winds come and go among the few
Bright stars we see and many more unseen.

Birds sing on earth all day among the flowers,
Taking no thought of any other thing
But their own hearts, for out of them they sing:
Their songs are kindred to the blossom heads,
Faint as the petals which the blackthorn sheds,
A...

Fredegond Shove

The Gorse

In dream, again within the clean, cold hell
Of glazed and aching silence he was trapped;
And, closing in, the blank walls of his cell
Crushed stifling on him ... when the bracken snapped,
Caught in his clutching fingers; and he lay
Awake upon his back among the fern,
With free eyes travelling the wide blue day,
Unhindered, unremembering; while a burn
Tinkled and gurgled somewhere out of sight,
Unheard of him; till suddenly aware
Of its cold music, shivering in the light,
He raised himself, and with far-ranging stare
Looked all about him: and with dazed eyes wide
Saw, still as in a numb, unreal dream,
Black figures scouring a far hill-side,
With now and then a sunlit rifle's gleam;
And knew the hunt was hot upon his track:
Yet hardly seemed to mind, someho...

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Driftwood

Black spars of driftwood burn to peacock flames,
Sea-emeralds and sea-purples and sea-blues,
And all the innumerable ever-changing hues
That haunt the changeless deeps but have no names,
Flicker and spire in our enchanted sight:
And as we gaze, the unsearchable mystery,
The unfathomed cold salt magic of the sea,
Shines clear before us in the quiet night.

We know the secret that Ulysses sought,
That moonstruck mariners since time began
Snatched at a drowning hazard - -strangely brought
To our homekeeping hearts in drifting spars
We chanced to kindle under the cold stars -
The secret in the ocean-heart of man.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Wings

As a blue-necked mallard alighting in a pool
Among marsh-marigolds and splashing wet
Green leaves and yellow blooms, like jewels set
In bright, black mud, with clear drops crystal-cool,
Bringing keen savours of the sea and stir
Of windy spaces where wild sunsets flame
To that dark inland dyke, the thought of her
Into my brooding stagnant being came.

And all my senses quickened into life,
Tingling and glittering, and the salt and fire
Sang through my singing blood in eager strife
Until through crystal airs we seemed to be
Soaring together, one fleet-winged desire
Of windy sunsets and the wandering sea.

Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

The Pilgrim's Dream - Or, The Star And The Glow-Worm

A Pilgrim, when the summer day
Had closed upon his weary way,
A lodging begged beneath a castle's roof;
But him the haughty Warder spurned;
And from the gate the Pilgrim turned,
To seek such covert as the field
Or heath-besprinkled copse might yield,
Or lofty wood, shower-proof.

He paced along; and, pensively,
Halting beneath a shady tree,
Whose moss-grown root might serve for couch or seat,
Fixed on a Star his upward eye;
Then, from the tenant of the sky
He turned, and watched with kindred look,
A Glow-worm, in a dusky nook,
Apparent at his feet.

The murmur of a neighbouring stream
Induced a soft and slumbrous dream,
A pregnant dream, within whose shadowy bounds
He recognised the earth-born Star,
And 'That' which glittered from...

William Wordsworth