The Penny Whistle (verse)
Gray, Agnes Kendrick
The Penny Whistle There we sat in the candlelightPoets gathered out of the night, Seven poets gathered together Gut of the wolf-cold winter weather, Reading poems we had made ourselves. . ....
...So out we ran...
...Then through the window pierced a sound- We stopped the reading, we stared around, And shrill as the voice of a winter bird The notes of a penny whistle were heard...
...Kept him playing through half the night, Forgetting the songs we had made ourselves...
...One of our poets was Irish-he Knew of the source of this minstrelsey, Knew it came from the Celtic sea...
...Long and long we kept him there With his shabby coat and his thin grey hair, Under the spell of the candlelight, That painted shadows like Irish elves...
...With a coaxing word We rallied the whistler out of the night, Bidding him play in our candlelight...
...For we were poets aware, effete, Knowing the reasons for stress and beat, But his was a native music, free As the blackbird's trill in the hawthorn tree...
...And the penny whistle's music flowed Like the wind on an upland Irish road- We smelled the sea and we felt the spume, We saw the bog-flowers all in bloom And the peat pools where the plovers wade, As the exile penny whistler played...
...More of a poet than we...
...Agnes Kkndrick Gray...
...Like a leprechaun in the candleglow With his penny pipe and his tapping toe, Better than we, and we told him so...
...And the shadows flitted'and climbed like elves On the batik walls and the blue bookshelves...
...More of a poet was he than we...
Vol. 11 • December 1929 • No. 6
