Poems by Robert GravesI?ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;
?Gabble-gabble,? brethren,? gabble-gabble!?
My window frames forest and heather.
I hardly hear the tuneful babble,
Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
To you who?d read my songs of War
And only hear of blood and fame,
I?ll say (you?ve heard it said before)
When a dream is born in you
With a sudden clamorous pain,
When you know the dream is true
And lovely, with no flaw nor stain,
This valley wood is pledged
To the set shape of things,
And reasonably hedged:
Here are no harpies fledged,
?Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
Marching below, and we still gulping wine??
The child alone a poet is:
Spring and Fairyland are his.
Truth and Reason show but dim,
And all?s poetry with him.
Call it a good marriage -
For no one ever questioned
Her warmth, his masculinity,
Their interlocking views;
Father is quite the greatest poet
That ever lived anywhere.
You say you?re going to write great music?
Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Back from the line one night in June,
I gave a dinner at Bethune?
Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal
You, love, and I,
(He whispers) you and I,
And if no more than only you and I
What care you or I ?
Counting the beats,
An ancient saga tells us how
In the beginning the First Cow
(For nothing living yet had birth
But Elemental Cow on earth)
The difference between you and her
(whom I to you did once prefer)
Is clear enough to settle:
She like a diamond shone, but you
Double red daisies, they?re my flowers,
Which nobody else may grow.
In a big quarrelsome house like ours
Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love's name,
Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise
August 6, 1916.?Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.)
Here down this very way,
Here only yesterday
King Faun went leaping.
He sang, with careless shout
Hurling his name about;
Feet and faces tingle
In that frore land:
Legs wobble and go wingle,
You scarce can stand.
The skies are jewelled all around,
I now delight
In spite
Of the might
And the right
Of classic tradition,
In writing
And reciting
Straight ahead,
(For D. C. T., Killed at Fricourt, March, 1916)
Yet once an earlier David took
Smooth pebbles from the brook:
Look at my knees,
That island rising from the steamy seas!
The candles a tall lightship; my two hands
Children born of fairy stock
Never need for shirt or frock,
Never want for food or fire,
Always get their hearts desire:
He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.
He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
Christ of His gentleness
Thirsting and hungering,
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
Unto lost desert-folk
What could be dafter
Than John Skelton?s laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
A purple whale
Proudly sweeps his tail
Towards Nineveh;
Glassy green
Surges between
A mile of roaring sea.
?O town of gold,
I never dreamed we?d meet that day
In our old haunts down Fricourt way,
Plotting such marvellous journeys there
She, then, like snow in a dark night,
Fell secretly. And the world waked
With dazzling of the drowsy eye,
His eyes are quickened so with grief,
He can watch a grass or leaf
Every instant grow; he can
Clearly through a flint wall see,
To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;
In his grotto the maiden sits alone.
She gazes up with a weary smile
Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire's own daughter,
With a fork drive Nature out,
She will ever yet return;
Hedge the flowerbed all about,
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
Old Mr. Philosopher
Comes for Ben and Claire,
An ugly man, a tall man,
With bright-red hair.
The books that he?s written
Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain,
I know that David?s with me here again.
Not to sleep all the night long, for pure joy,
Counting no sheep and careless of chimes
Welcoming the dawn confabulation
Those who dare give nothing
Are left with less than nothing;
Dear heart, you give me everything,
She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
BOY
Most venerable and learned sir,
Tall and true Philosopher,
These rings of smoke you blow all day
