Cherry-Time
Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Under the moon.
And you’ll be fairies soon.
In the cherry pluckt at night,
With the dew of summer swelling,
There’s a juice of pure delight,
Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
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poem by Robert Graves
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Cherry-Time
Cherries of the night are riper
Than the cherries pluckt at noon
Gather to your fairy piper
When he pipes his magic tune:
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
Mine are rounder,
Mine are sweeter
For the eater
Under the moon.
And you’ll be fairies soon.
In the cherry pluckt at night,
With the dew of summer swelling,
There’s a juice of pure delight,
Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.
Merry, merry,
Take a cherry;
Mine are sounder,
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poem by Robert Graves
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Corporal Stare
Back from the line one night in June,
I gave a dinner at Bethune—
Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal
Money could buy or batman steal.
Five hungry lads welcomed the fish
With shouts that nearly cracked the dish;
Asparagus came with tender tops,
Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops.
Said Jenkins, as my hand he shook,
“They’ll put this in the history book.”
We bawled Church anthems in choro
Of Bethlehem and Hermon snow,
With drinking songs, a jolly sound
To help the good red Pommard round.
Stories and laughter interspersed,
We drowned a long La Bassée thirst—
Trenches in June make throats damned dry.
Then through the window suddenly,
Badge, stripes and medals all complete,
We saw him swagger up the street,
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poem by Robert Graves
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Hawk And Buckle
Where is the landlord of old Hawk and Buckle,
And what of Master Straddler this hot summer weather?
He's along in the tap-room with broad cheeks a-chuckle,
And ten bold companions all drinking together.
Where is the daughter of old Hawk and Buckle,
And what of Mistress Jenny this hot summer weather?
She sits in the parlour with smell of honeysuckle,
Trimming her bonnet with red ostrich feather.
Where is the ostler of old Hawk and Buckle,
And what of Willy Jakeman this hot summer weather?
He is rubbing his eyes with a slow and lazy knuckle
As he wakes from his nap on a bank of fresh heather.
Where is the page boy of old Hawk and Buckle,
And what of our young Charlie this hot summer weather?
He is bobbing for tiddlers in a little trickle-truckle,
With his line and his hook and his breeches of leather.
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poem by Robert Graves
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Tom Taylor
On pay-day nights, neck-full with beer,
Old soldiers stumbling homeward here,
Homeward (still dazzled by the spark
Love kindled in some alley dark)
Young soldiers mooning in slow thought,
Start suddenly, turn about, are caught
By a dancing sound, merry as a grig,
Tom Taylor's piccolo playing jig.
Never was blown from human cheeks
Music like this, that calls and speaks
Till sots and lovers from one string
Dangle and dance in the same ring.
Tom, of your piping I've heard said
And seen--that you can rouse the dead,
Dead-drunken men awash who lie
In stinking gutters hear your cry,
I've seen them twitch, draw breath, grope, sigh,
Heave up, sway, stand; grotesquely then
You set them dancing, these dead men.
They stamp and prance with sobbing breath,
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poem by Robert Graves
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An Old Twenty-Third Man
“Is that the Three-and-Twentieth, Strabo mine,
Marching below, and we still gulping wine?”
From the sad magic of his fragrant cup
The red-faced old centurion started up,
Cursed, battered on the table. “No,” he said,
“Not that! The Three-and-Twentieth Legion’s dead,
Dead in the first year of this damned campaign—
The Legion’s dead, dead, and won’t rise again.
Pity? Rome pities her brave lads that die,
But we need pity also, you and I,
Whom Gallic spear and Belgian arrow miss,
Who live to see the Legion come to this,
Unsoldierlike, slovenly, bent on loot,
Grumblers, diseased, unskilled to thrust or shoot.
O, brown cheek, muscled shoulder, sturdy thigh!
Where are they now? God! watch it struggle by,
The sullen pack of ragged ugly swine.
Is that the Legion, Gracchus? Quick, the wine!”
“Strabo,” said Gracchus, “you are strange tonight.
The Legion is the Legion; it’s all right.
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poem by Robert Graves
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Love and Black Magic
To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone;
In his grotto the maiden sits alone.
She gazes up with a weary smile
At the rafter-hanging crocodile,
The slowly swinging crocodile.
Scorn has she of her master’s gear,
Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere,
Phial, philtre—“Fiddlededee
For all such trumpery trash!” quo’ she.
“A soldier is the lad for me;
Hey and hither, my lad!
“Oh, here have I ever lain forlorn:
My father died ere I was born,
Mother was by a wizard wed,
And oft I wish I had died instead—
Often I wish I were long time dead.
But, delving deep in my master’s lore,
I have won of magic power such store
I can turn a skull—oh, fiddlededee
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poem by Robert Graves
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John Skelton
What could be dafter
Than John Skelton’s laughter?
What sound more tenderly
Than his pretty poetry?
So where to rank old Skelton?
He was no monstrous Milton,
Nor wrote no “Paradise Lost,”
So wondered at by most,
Phrased so disdainfully,
Composed so painfully.
He struck what Milton missed,
Milling an English grist
With homely turn and twist.
He was English through and through,
Not Greek, nor French, nor Jew,
Though well their tongues he knew,
The living and the dead:
Learned Erasmus said,
Hic ’unum Britannicarum
Lumen et decus literarum.
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poem by Robert Graves
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Careers
Father is quite the greatest poet
That ever lived anywhere.
You say you’re going to write great music—
I chose that first: it’s unfair.
Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and
do Christ and angels, or lovely pears
and apples and grapes on a green dish,
or storms at sea, or anything lovely,
Because that’s been taken by Claire.
It’s stupid to be an engine-driver,
And soldiers are horrible men.
I won’t be a tailor, I won’t be a sailor,
And gardener’s taken by Ben.
It’s unfair if you say that you’ll write great
music, you horrid, you unkind (I sim-
ply loathe you, though you are my
sister), you beast, cad, coward, cheat,
bully, liar!
Well? Say what’s left for me then!
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poem by Robert Graves
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Rocky Acres
This is a wild land, country of my choice,
With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
But voice of cold water that runs here and there
Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run nor no birds cry
For fear of the dark speck that floats in the sky.
He soars and he hovers rocking on his wings,
He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
He tears them in pieces dropping from the sky:
Tenderness and pity the land will deny,
Where life is but nourished from water and rock,
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.
Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,
The rocks jut, the streams flow singing on either hand,
Careless if the season be early or late.
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poem by Robert Graves
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