A Dead Boche
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)
”War’s Hell!” and if you doubt the same,
Today I found in Mametz Wood
A certain cure for lust of blood:
Where, propped against a shattered trunk,
In a great mess of things unclean,
Sat a dead Boche; he scowled and stunk
With clothes and face a sodden green,
Big-bellied, spectacled, crop-haired,
Dribbling black blood from nose and beard.
poem by Robert Graves
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The Snapped Thread
Desire, first, by a natural miracle
United bodies, united hearts, blazed beauty;
Transcended bodies, transcended hearts.
Two souls, now unalterably one
In whole love always and for ever,
Soar out of twilight, through upper air,
Let fall their sensous burden.
Is it kind, though, is it honest even,
To consort with none but spirits-
Leaving true-wedded hearts like ours
In enforced night-long separation,
Each to its random bodily inclination,
The thread of miracle snapped?
poem by Robert Graves
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Song: One Hard Look
Small gnats that fly
In hot July
And lodge in sleeping ears,
Can rouse therein
A trumpet's din
With Day-of-Judgement fears.
Small mice at night
Can wake more fright
Than lions at midday.
An urchin small
Torments us all
Who tread his prickly way.
A straw will crack
The camel's back,
To die we need but sip,
So little sand
As fills the hand
Can stop a steaming ship.
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Graves
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A Song For Two Children
'Make a song, father, a new little song,
All for Jenny and Nancy.'
Balow lalow or Hey derry down,
Or else what might you fancy?
Is there any song sweet enough
For Nancy and for Jenny?
Said Simple Simon to the pieman,
'Indeed I know not any.'
'I've counted the miles to Babylon,
I've flown the earth like a bird,
I've ridden cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
But no such song have I heard.'
'Some speak of Alexander,
And some of Hercules,
But where are there any like Nancy and Jenny,
Where are there any like these?'
poem by Robert Graves
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The Thieves
Lovers in the act despense
With such meum-tuum sense
As might warningly reveal
What they must not pick or steal,
And their nostrum is to say:
'I and you are both away.'
After, when they disentwine
You from me and yours from mine,
Neither can be certain who
Was that I whose mine was you.
To the act again they go
More completely not to know.
Theft is theft and raid is raid
Though reciprocally made.
Lovers, the conclusion is
Doubled sighs and jealousies
In a single heart that grieves
For lost honour among thieves.
poem by Robert Graves
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A First Review
Love, Fear and Hate and Childish Toys
Are here discreetly blent;
Admire, you ladies, read, you boys,
My Country Sentiment.
But Kate says, 'Cut that anger and fear,
True love's the stuff we need!
With laughing children and the running deer
That makes a book indeed.'
Then Tom, a hard and bloody chap,
Though much beloved by me,
'Robert, have done with nursery pap,
Write like a man,' says he.
Hate and Fear are not wanted here,
Nor Toys nor Country Lovers,
Everything they took from my new poem book
But the flyleaf and the covers.
poem by Robert Graves
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The Beacon
The silent shepherdess,
She of my vows,
Here with me exchanging love
Under dim boughs.
Shines on our mysteries
A sudden spark--
'Dout the candle, glow-worm,
Let all be dark.
'The birds have sung their last notes,
The Sun's to bed,
Glow-worm, dout your candle.'
The glow-worm said:
'I also am a lover;
The lamp I display
Is beacon for my true love
Wandering astray.
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Graves
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Two Fusiliers
And have we done with War at last?
Well, we’ve been lucky devils both,
And there’s no need of pledge or oath
To bind our lovely friendship fast,
By firmer stuff
Close bound enough.
By wire and wood and stake we’re bound,
By Fricourt and by Festubert,
By whipping rain, by the sun’s glare,
By all the misery and loud sound,
By a Spring day,
By Picard clay.
Show me the two so closely bound
As we, by the red bond of blood,
By friendship, blossoming from mud,
By Death: we faced him, and we found
Beauty in Death,
In dead men breath.
poem by Robert Graves
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Nine O'Clock
I.
Nine of the clock, oh!
Wake my lazy head!
Your shoes of red morocco,
Your silk bed-gown:
Rouse, rouse, speck-eyed Mary
In your high bed!
A yawn, a smile, sleepy-starey,
Mary climbs down.
'Good-morning to my brothers,
Good-day to the Sun,
Halloo, halloo to the lily-white sheep
That up the mountain run.'
II.
Good-night to the meadow, farewell to the nine o'clock Sun,
'He loves me not, loves me, he loves me not' (O jealous one!)
'He loves me, he loves me not, loves me'--O soft nights of June,
[...] Read more
poem by Robert Graves
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1915
I’ve watched the Seasons passing slow, so slow,
In the fields between La Bassée and Bethune;
Primroses and the first warm day of Spring,
Red poppy floods of June,
August, and yellowing Autumn, so
To Winter nights knee-deep in mud or snow,
And you’ve been everything.
Dear, you’ve been everything that I most lack
In these soul-deadening trenches—pictures, books,
Music, the quiet of an English wood,
Beautiful comrade-looks,
The narrow, bouldered mountain-track,
The broad, full-bosomed ocean, green and black,
And Peace, and all that’s good.
poem by Robert Graves
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