This is one of my favourite poems. I’m glad to say that I was made to learn it at school and it one of the few poems that I can pretty much quote from memory. When I worked in London, I would often recite this to myself on hot, stuffy summer days, when the air and noise of the city was becoming unbearable.
I am also a person who cannot go near the sea without going in; I have paddled at Cley-next-the sea in November, I have swum off Brighton in March at six o’clock in the morning in my underwear, I have struck out from Gigha, surrounded by seals, on a September evening without my underwear, because the sea calls to me in a way that makes me ache.
Reading this poem again, I am struck by the power of the rhythms and aliterations and I can see it all.
The Ice Cart by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962)
Perched on my city office-stool
I watched with envy while a cool
And lucky carter handled ice …
And I was wandering in a trice
Far from the grey and grimy heat
Of that intolerable street
O’er sapphire berg and emerald flow
Beneath the still cold ruby glow
Of everlasting Polar night,
Bewildered by the queer half light,
Until I stumble unawares
Upon a creek where big white bears
Plunged headlong down with with flourished heels
And floundered after shining seals
Through shivering seas of blinding blue.
And, as I watched them, ere I knew
I’d stripped and I was swimming too
Among the seal-pack, young and hale,
And thrusting on with threshing tail,
With twist and twirl and sudden leap
Through crackling ice and salty deep,
Diving and doubling with my kind,
Until, at last, we left behind
Those big white, blundering bulks of death,
And lay, at length, with panting breath
Upon a far untravelled flow,
Beneath a gentle drift of snow –
Snow drifting gently, fine and white,
Out of the endless Polar night,
Falling and falling evermore
Upon that far untravelled shore,
Till I was buried fathoms deep
Beneath that cold, white drifting sleep –
Sleep drifting sleep …
The carter cracked a sudden whip:
I clutched my stool with startled grip,
Awakening to the grimy heat
Of that intolerable street.
Wartime Housewife 