The Stone

"And will you cut a stone for him,
To set above his head?
And will you cut a stone for him—
A stone for him?" she said.

Three days before, a splintered rock
Had struck her lover dead—
Had struck him in the quarry dead,
Where, careless of a warning call,
He loitered, while the shot was fired—
A lively stripling, brave and tall,
And sure of all his heart desired . . .
A flash, a shock,
A rumbling fall . . .
And, broken 'neath the broken rock,
A lifeless heap, with face of clay,
And still as any stone he lay,
With eyes that saw the end of all.

I went to break the news to her:
And I could hear my own heart beat
With dread of what my lips might say;
But some poor fool had sped before;
And, flinging wide her father's door,
Had blurted out the news to her,
Had struck her lover dead for her,
Had struck the girl's heart dead in her,
Had struck life, lifeless, at a word,
And dropped it at her feet:
Then hurried on his witless way,
Scarce knowing she had heard.

And when I came, she stood alone—
A woman, turned to stone:
And, though no word at all she said,
I knew that all was known.

Because her heart was dead,
She did not sigh nor moan.
His mother wept:
She could not weep.
Her lover slept:
She could not sleep.
Three days, three nights,
She did not stir:
Three days, three nights,
Were one to her,
Who never closed her eyes
From sunset to sunrise,
From dawn to evenfall—
Her tearless, staring eyes,
That, seeing naught, saw all.

The fourth night when I came from work,
I found her at my door.
"And will you cut a stone for him?"
She said: and spoke no more:
But followed me, as I went in,
And sank upon a chair;
And fixed her grey eyes on my face,
With still, unseeing stare.
And, as she waited patiently,
I could not bear to feel
Those still, grey eyes that followed me,
Those eyes that plucked the heart from me,
Those eyes that sucked the breath from me
And curdled the warm blood in me,
Those eyes that cut me to the bone,
And cut my marrow like cold steel.

And so I rose and sought a stone;
And cut it smooth and square:
And, as I worked, she sat and watched,
Beside me, in her chair.
Night after night, by candlelight,
I cut her lover's name:
Night after night, so still and white,
And like a ghost she came;
And sat beside me, in her chair,
And watched with eyes aflame.

She eyed each stroke,
And hardly stirred:
she never spoke
A single word:
And not a sound or murmur broke
The quiet, save the mallet stroke.

With still eyes ever on my hands,
With eyes that seemed to burn my hands,
My wincing, overwearied hands,
She watched, with bloodless lips apart,
And silent, indrawn breath:
And every stroke my chisel cut,
Death cut still deeper in her heart:
The two of us were chiselling,
Together, I and Death.

And when at length my job was done,
And I had laid the mallet by,
As if, at last, her peace were won,
She breathed his name, and, with a sigh,
Passed slowly through the open door:
And never crossed my threshold more.

Next night I laboured late, alone,
To cut her name upon the stone.

Analysis (ai): The poem follows a loose ballad structure with irregular stanzas and enjambment, using repetition for rhythmic emphasis rather than adhering strictly to traditional meter. This looser form aligns with early 20th-century trends that moved away from rigid Victorian forms, though it retains narrative clarity uncommon in high modernism.

Narrative Perspective: The use of a first-person male speaker—a fellow worker rather than a family member—shifts emotional focus from familial grief to communal labor and silent complicity. This choice departs from the author’s more common use of internal monologues and distinguishes the poem within his body of working-class narratives.

Emotional Restraint: Grief is conveyed through absence—lack of tears, speech, movement—rather than overt expression. This restraint contrasts with the emotional directness typical of Gibson’s other poems and reflects a modern sensibility where trauma resists articulation.

Symbolism of the Stone: The stone functions both as a literal object and a metaphor for emotional petrification. Unlike typical elegies that seek resolution through memorialization, here the monument becomes a site of shared labor between the living and death itself, implicating the speaker in the ongoing process of mourning.

Repetition and Ritual: The repeated question “And will you cut a stone for him?” initiates a ritual that structures the poem. Its recurrence suggests mechanical repetition of duty over time, mirroring industrial labor patterns and underscoring emotional paralysis.

Gender and Silence: The woman’s silence is not passivity but a form of agency that disrupts expectations. Her gaze exerts power, unbroken and demanding, challenging conventional portrayals of female grief as vocal and performative, especially in early 20th-century working-class poetry.

Labor as Mourning: The act of chiseling becomes synonymous with grieving. This fusion of physical work and emotional processing recurs in the author’s writing but is here rendered more somber and symbiotic, aligning mourning with persistence rather than catharsis.

Modern Engagement: Written in the early 1900s, the poem reflects growing anxieties around industrial labor and its human cost, engaging with modern concerns about alienation, mechanization, and the erasure of individual lives within collective systems.

Understated Trauma: The poem resists dramatic climax, portraying trauma as sustained and internal. This quiet devastation contrasts with the era’s tendency toward moralizing or redemptive endings in working-class literature.

Final Act of Tribute: The speaker’s private addition of her name to the stone reveals an unspoken bond and shifts the poem’s closure from commemoration of the dead to recognition of the overlooked living—suggesting that true remembrance includes those broken by loss but left behind.

Place in Oeuvre: Among Gibson’s lesser-known poems, this piece stands out for its psychological depth and sustained focus on a single event. It lacks the regional dialect and multiple voices typical of his work, favoring a refined, introspective tone.

Visual and Sensory Focus: The dominance of sight—especially the woman’s unblinking eyes—substitutes for speech and touch. Vision becomes oppressive, a mechanism of shared suffering rather than connection, aligning the poem with early modernist preoccupations with perception and isolation.

Absence of Religion: Unlike many elegies of the period, there is no invocation of faith, afterlife, or divine justice. The stone replaces any spiritual consolation, emphasizing materiality and human effort in the face of meaninglessness.

Narrative Delay: The delayed arrival of the speaker at the moment of death’s announcement creates narrative tension. His secondary role underscores how grief spreads laterally through communities, a theme underdeveloped in contemporaneous works focused on individual lament.

Unconventional Closure: The final line subverts expectations—not a resolution of grief but its continuation through solitary, unseen labor. This departure from closure is rare in Gibson’s typically resolved narratives and anticipates modernist fragmentation.

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Older comments

- This poem is very important to me. As a 12-year-old I was given it to read for our annual Declamation Prize by my English master, Hugh Hunter, when I was at Oakham School. The hot favourite that year (1971) was an older boy in Chapmans House who recited Albert and the Lion. He could do a very close impersonation of Stanley Holloway's accent when he performed it in the 1930s. Apparently, he'd won the previous year with a similar rendition.

Hugh Hunter selected this poem for me in the afternoon, just a few hours before the competition kicked off. I wasn't going to go because I couldn't get back home as I was an hour's bus ride away. However, another boy who'd made it to the final, Neil Millington, convinced his parents to give me a lift home (Neil and I were the only 'Day Boys' to make the final - the other finalists were all Boarders).

The judges were professional actors from Nottingham Playhouse - one of which was an Oakham 'old boy', Richard Hope (Brideshead Revisited and numerous other TV, film, and West End stage roles). When they announced me as the winner, the audience (which was composed of 100% boarders because all the day boys had gone home for after school and this was at around 8pm) was most unimpressed. It was my second of three Declamation Prizes and pretty much the only thing I ever did at Oakham that could be deemed worthy!

Dec '24

- From guest BoB (contact)
He was not a soldier, he was a miner. And he was supposed to be carved a headstone, not an eepitaph.

Mar 2011

I-Like-Rhymes - Any summary here can only be one person's interpretation now that the poet is no longer with us.
The initial feeling is of a soldier shot in action and his girlfriend being informed but the timescale (3days) is wrong. Was it on training manoueveres perhaps?
Then the longer time involved in cutting and carving a headstone might indicate it is not military but a quarrying accident and a stone-carver's response.
However deeper reading makes that impossible. Why would she sit in HER chair by him AT NIGHT whilst he carves a headstone?
In the end I went back to my earlier thoughts that it is a soldier wounded in action and a friends attempts to comfort his grieveing sweetheart. She would probably have recieved an impersonal telegram message very quickly giving the briefest of details before she recieved the comforting letter of explanation from him.
She then, knowing his literary skills, asked the poet to write his epitaph (perhaps this very poem?) and he does so with the image of her in his mind as he writes hoping that, in writing, he is making grief easier to bear.
A further possibility is that he, as an officer (look at the uniform), will have been responsible for writing many many letters to wives, mothers, sweethearts back in England to tell of the death of a loved husband, son, lover. Such a task can be as demanding as carving an epitaph.
[ (Sassoon's The Hero has an alternative take on the death message http://oldpoetry.com/opoem/show/33903) ]
The most chilling part for me is the final lines where he foresees the person recieving the letter dying of grief. Or perhaps he just sees that particular sad person disappearing to be replaced by another with the next letter he has to write.
Meanings within meanings metaphors within metaphors. You must decide what you think. This might help
http://oldpoetry.com/board/topic/1492
Jim

Jan 2011

- From guest Walter Hubert (contact)
i didn't understand this poem, can you give out the summary of this poem.. please

Jan 2011

- From guest S S M (contact)
...well when i read it first and to date this has always been and shall be wiht me... its such beautifully written... and thnx to my teachers for having taught this to us... and i would love my kids to read it too

Nov 2010

Comments from the archive

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- From guest pooja (contact)
the best poem i have ever read..!..it brings out real meaning of love...

Jan 2010

- From guest pravinsinh parmar (contact)
57 years passed when I was a school sudent.My english teacer explained the trauma of the young woman who lost her lover and whole world with him.This poem was deeply rooted in my heart and i always wished to read it again and again but could not get it.fortunately i remembered the line"and will you cut a stone for him..."and,today my long charished wish fulfilled by internet.I feel as if i am in my school class room before my teacher and lost in the heart of the poetry.

Jul 2009

- From guest Julie (contact)
My father used to recite this to us when we were little children. We loved it as he did. Now he is gone, and we had to carve a stone for him.

May 2009

- From guest Helen (contact)
I read this poem in elementary school in a book of poems.. I was a young child and cried .. I am now a much older woman and still cry when I read it...I am so glad I found it here (actually a friend found it for me), have been searching for it for many years. This poem is a work of art..thank you for having it here.

May 2009

- From guest Helen (contact)
I read this poem in a book of poems we had in elementary school. I cried every time I read it..I was a young girl then...I am so glad I found it again. I still cry and now am an older woman..it is a beautiful and touching work of art.

May 2009

- From guest Sarah (contact)
i've loved this poem since i first read it. i'm happy to find it again

May 2009

- From guest Kippy Smith (contact)
I did a report on this poem in High School, carried it with me for many years and have even talked to my kids about it. It is my all time favorite poem. The fascination I find with this poem isn't so much her deep love for her lover lost, but for the stone cutter who clearly is in love with her...feeling the greatest loss of all. He never got to tell her how he felt, never got to be there for her in her greif like he'd hoped to be... but in his love for her would make sure that he cut her name upon the stone as his final act of love for her as hers was for her lover.

May 2009

- From guest Lydia (contact)
I simply love this poem. In my English class, I was supposed to pick three poems out of the sixteen we studied and rank them. I ranked "The Stone" first it touched me the deepest. I couldn't stop thinking about it.

Mar 2009

- From guest Shannon Hyvarinen (contact)
I am a 33 year old woman. I read this poem in my junior year of high school. I tore it out of my english book and have had it with me ever since. It touched me deeply and I will cherish it forever!

Oct 2008

- From guest Merissa (contact)
gibsons point of the poem is to show the emotional damage of losing a spouse... the widows husband was.. i believe.. shot... and she was left alone.. but she was dead inside and all she wanted was a gravestone to "set above his head"... and once her goal was complete.. she died so she could be with him again. i believe that this might be during some sort of war.. but im not sure. it is the most beautiful poem i have ever read and you can really connect with the characters and feel their pain. it is amazing!!!

Dec 2007

- this poem really confused me albeit im only in ninth grade and i am memorizing this poem for a test and i really think it would help if someone could explain to me the point of this poem so that i can unlock the emotional depth described by those who have read it

Mar 2005

Avie d - This was so very sad. I felt the sting of pain for the poor widowed girl but I felt it even more at the end when he carved the stone for her. This is one of the best darn poems i've ever read on this subject. Written absolutely wonderfullly and done with so much passion it can literally leave the reader in tears.

Avril

Aug 2004

Memnoch - amazing. honestly, my eyes got teary! this is by far The Best poem i have ever read!! honestly, had you posted it in a contest you would have definitley gotten first place. i absolutley loved it. i don't usually book mark poems, but this one, i have to! thanx for writing it...

May 2004

Honeyhannah - I love this poem it's got a great rhythm to it, great tone, the images are lovely, and the language is so smooth and still shocking. It's great!

May 2004