English poem

[Mirilla]

Does anyone recognzie this poem?

On summer Saturdays' long afternoons
I used to climb bare foot on throne-like knoll
Soliloquizing - father's coming soon.
The grey pike billowed eastward like a scroll
And vanished in the apex of a hill -- one world, long mile away.
Around me played the ever shifting shadows
Magically tiptoeing from each every lengthening shade.
I knew that when they came into my ken
I should know the span;
White stockinged bay, head tossing grey
And then the strong familiar figure of the man.
I'd know them, know them, leaping with their joy.
My swift feet from their cairn would bear me down,
A carefree, zephyr-hearted boy
To welcome home my father from the town.
Once on a time he went away again.
Perhaps the sun shone but I could not see.
I have not climbed that knoll since then
For father is not coming home to me.
Somehwre he rests upon a sun0-kissed hill
And whispers "My boy is coming soon."
He'll know me from afar, I know he will,
When world tired, I trudge home some afternoon.

Thank you much.

[pagebypage]

It's in A Sample Case of Humor by Strickland Gillilan, titled "Waiting".

http://books.google.com/books?id=VkA...2YAw#PPA111,M1

[Mirilla]

Thank you so much! I'm quite shocked. I never saw my father read other than English poetry yet clearly he did. Daddy idolized his own father, gone now many years ago. After my own father's recent death, I found ths one poem amongst his things and it just kind of shattered me. My father was an atheist, a realist, yet to see with this poem even a hint of a hope he would see his father again . . . . Quite touching.

[MarkC]

Yes, this is the poem from A Sample Case Humour by Strickland Gillilan.This poem is very touchy....:-)