1

THUNDER WITCHCRAFT.

In the black hobgoblin weather
Thunder-witches laughed together,
Laughed for waste and laughed for dool,
Drum-a-doom and cackle-deedle,
While through the murk of hell cloud wool
Went the lightning knitting needle.

The brindle frog went up the tree
And croaked back seven times at me;
The smoke blew out, the black cat cried;
And down from the top of the world there fell
The fear of a thing the dark can tell
With its soul shut and its eyes wide.

I pulled an apple off the tree
Cackle-deedle and drum-a-doom
I set it green upon my knee,
And the lightning blue went round the room.
I sang a song to a bird that knew,
And away and away with a word he flew
To bring the White Lady of Grief to me.

She rode up from the black of the south,
And set a white hand on my mouth;
And when she laughed and when she sighed
My should was shut, my eyes were wide.
We broke the cross in pieces four
And trod them under on the floor.
We said a thing that has no name;
And her mouth on mine was a red, sweet flame,
While the thunder-witches laughed together
In the joy of the black hobgoblin weather.






2
The morning clamoured at the door,
I feared that Thing upon the floor;
I dared not let the good light in
With yellow eyes to see my sin.
I set a bar across my soul
Lest life should see how much I stole
From death in that black thunder-weather
When fear and shame made tryst together.

David McKee Wright
N.S.W.
The Bulletin, 27
th
April 1922