Finally, W. W. Gibson, a poet devoted to simple narrative, telling quiet stories without number, always with feeling and reticence, gave his sober naturalism to the publication [Georgian Poetry]. If Abercrombie was stately and measured, Brooke like a jet of flame, and Drinkwater a contented murmur, Gibson had ever the homeliness of peat and heather.
FRANK SWINNERTON: The Georgian Literary Scene 1910–1935 (1935)
Born in Hexham, Northumberland, Gibson moved to London in 1912, where he rented a room above Harold Monro’s Poetry Bookshop. The style of much of his early poetry is Romantic, but by the time he joined Abercrombie in Gloucestershire, he had begun to find his true voice. One of the Dymock poets – who numbered Rupert Brooke, Edward Thomas, Robert Frost, W. H. Davies, Lascelles Abercrombie, Eleanor Farjeon, John Drinkwater and others – he was inspired by the landscape around the small Gloucestershire village of Dymock, and though he lived there in the Old Nail Shop for much of the war, he kept returning in his poetry to the wild Northumbrian landscape he knew so well. Many of his poems deal with poverty and workers such as fishermen and miners, and tap into the rich folk song heritage of the North-East. In London he met both Edward Marsh and Rupert Brooke, with whom he struck up a close friendship. Gibson contributed to Marsh’s Georgian Poetry, and published many volumes of verse and verse drama. His best-known volume is Whin (1918) – the word means gorse, furze – which includes all the poems printed here. Despite several attempts to enlist in the army, he was always turned down because of poor eyesight; he was finally accepted, however, by the Army Service Corps and served for two years, two months of which were spent at the Front. Such war poems as ‘Breakfast’, ‘Mad’, ‘In the ambulance’ and ‘Back’, published in Battle (1916), are as powerful as any by Owen and Sassoon. Gibson was among sixteen Great War poets who were commemorated on a slate stone unveiled in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner on 11 November 1985. He continued to write after the war, and his Collected Poems were published in 1926. His last book, Within Four Walls, appeared in 1950. Ivor Gurney set nine of his poems: ‘Black Stitchel’, ‘Blaweary’, ‘The crowder’, ‘All night under the moon’, ‘The mugger’s song’, ‘Pedlar Jack’, ‘Pity me’, ‘Roses’ and ‘Sam Spraggon’, most of them still unpublished. Three other prolific composers of Gibson’s poetry were Herbert Howells, Fritz Hart and John Jeffreys.
Heatherland and bent-land –1
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.
Land of singing waters,
And winds from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.
Heatherland and bent-land,
And valleys rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.
On the day ere I was born
Underneath the ragged thorn
Three old women hobbled by.
One, she had an empty sack,
One, she had a humpy back,
One, she had a merry eye.
Underneath the ragged thorn,
As I lay upon the sack
With my little humpy back,
I was christened Merry Eye.
As I was lying on Black Stitchel
The wind was blowing from the South:
And I was thinking of the laughters
Of my love’s mouth.
As I was lying on Black Stitchel
The wind was blowing from the West:
And I was thinking of the quiet
Of my love’s breast.
As I was lying on Black Stitchel
The wind was blowing from the North:
And I was thinking of the countries
Black with wrath.
As I was lying on Black Stitchel
The wind was blowing from the East:
And I could think no more for pity
Of man and beast.
(Gurney)
I met an old man at Stow-on-the-Wold,
Who shook and shivered as though with cold.
And he said to me: ‘Six sons I had,
And each was a tall and a lively lad.
‘Six sons I had, six sons I had –
And each was a tall and a lively lad.’
The lad who went to Flanders –
Otterburn, Otterburn –
The lad who went to Flanders,
And never will return –
Though low he lies in Flanders,
Beneath the Flemish mud,
He hears through all his dreaming
The Otterburn in flood.
And though there be in Flanders
No clear and singing streams,
The Otterburn runs singing
Of summer through his dreams.
And when peace comes to Flanders,
Because it comes too late,
He’ll still lie there, and listen
To the Otterburn in spate –
The lad who went to Flanders –
Otterburn, Otterburn –
The lad who went to Flanders,
And never will return.