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Home  »  The New Poetry  »  Gold

Harriet Monroe, ed. (1860–1936). The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

Gold

By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

ALL day the mallet thudded far below

My garret, in an old ramshackle shed

Where ceaselessly, with stiffly nodding head

And rigid motions ever to and fro

A figure like a puppet in a show

Before the window moved till day was dead,

Beating out gold to earn his daily bread,

Beating out thin fine gold-leaf blow on blow.

And I within my garret all day long

Unto that ceaseless thudding tuned my song,

Beating out golden words in tune and time

To that dull thudding, rhyme on golden rhyme.

But in my dreams all night, in that dark shed,

With aching arms I beat fine gold for bread.