This is another poem I found in my copy of Walter de la Mare’s Come Hither anthology. I was looking through the section entitled Autumn Leaves, Winter Snow, in search of an appropriate poem for the cold and snowy weather we have been having.
I assume that this is the Gwen John who was a painter and older sister of Augustus John. I didn’t know she wrote any poetry. There are comprehensive notes at the back of the book, but no note for this one, unfortunately. I have not been able to find any information at all about it online. I can’t date it, but the anthology I found it in is the 1928 edition.
It therefore has to speak for itself, which is probably a good thing. The title might suggest something with a rather cosy feel, but that is not quite the case here.
The last two stanzas describe something perhaps better known to older readers, who may remember staring at an open fire and imagining all kinds of pictures in the shapes created by the burning wood or coal.
A Child’s Winter Evening by Gwen John
The smothering dark engulfs relentlessly
With nightmare tread approaching steadfastly;
All horrors thicken as the daylight fails
And, is it wind, or some lost ghost that wails?
Tongue cannot tell the stories that beset
With livid pictures blackness dense as jet,
Or that wild questioning – whence we are; and why;
If death is darkness; and why I am I.
The children look through the uneven pane
Out to the world, to bring them joy again;
But only snowflakes melting into mire
Without, within the red glow of the fire.
They long for something wonderful to break
This long-drawn winter wistfulness and take
Shape in the darkness; threatening like Fate
There comes a hell-like crackling from the grate.
But hand in hand they urge themselves anear
And watch the cities burning bright and clear;
Faces diabolical and cliffs and halls
And strangely-pinnacled, molten castle walls.
Tall figures flicker on the ceiling stark
Then grimly fade into one ominous dark;
Dream terrors iron-bound throng on them apace
And dusk with fire, and flames with shadows race.
The Good Reader 