Farewell
For the last time, maybe, upon the knoll
I stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad.
Day like a tragic actor plays his role
To the last whispered word and falls gold-clad.
I, too, take leave of all I ever had.
They shall not say I went with heavy heart:
Heavy I am, but soon I shall be free,
I love them all, but oh I now depart
A little sadly, strangely, fearfully,
As one who goes to try a mystery.
The bell is sounding down in Dedham vale:
Be still, O bell: too often standing here
When all the air was tremulous, fine and pale,
Thy golden note so calm, so still, so clear,
Out of my stony heart has struck a tear.
And now tears are not mine. I have release
From all the former and the later pain,
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poem by Robert Nichols
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The Day's March
The battery grides and jingles,
Mile succeeds to mile;
Shaking the noonday sunshine
The guns lunge out awhile,
And then are still awhile.
We amble along the highway;
The reeking, powdery dust
Ascends and cakes our faces
With a striped, sweaty crust.
Under the still sky's violet
The heat throbs on the air….
The white road's dusty radiance
Assumes a dark glare.
With a head hot and heavy,
And eyes that cannot rest,
And a black heart burning
In a stifled breast,
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poem by Robert Nichols
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PÆan
upon seeing a portrait of Blake
Something moves in his dust,
Flame sleeps beneath the crust;
O whence had he those eyes
Lit with celestial surprise?
From what world blew that gust?
Are we near to Paradise?
Gather a chaplet of five stars
And the opalescent hue
Of the aureole brightness cast —
Red, hardly red, and blue, scarce blue, —
Round th' immaculate frosty moon,
Splintering light in glacial spars,
When November's loudening blast
Sweeps heaven's floor till burnished
More crystal than at August noon,
So we fit radiance may cast
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poem by Robert Nichols
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At the Wars
Now that I am ta'en away
And may not see another day
What is it to my eye appears?
What sound rings in my stricken ears?
Not even the voice of any friend
Or eyes beloved-world-without-end,
But scenes and sounds of the country-side
In far England across the tide:
An upland field when spring's begun,
Mellow beneath the evening sun….
A circle of loose and lichened wall
Over which seven red pines fall….
An orchard of wizen blossoming trees
Wherein the nesting chaffinches
Begin again the self-same song
All the late April day-time long….
Paths that lead a shelving course
Between the chalk scarp and the gorse
By English downs; and oh! too well
I hear the hidden, clanking bell
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poem by Robert Nichols
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Three Songs Of The Enigma
I
SOMETHING
How long I have wished for something I know well,
But what that something is I cannot tell.
So often at sunrise in sad tears I wake
Shivering with longing for its sake;
So often at noontide when the house is still
It sickens me with its unbidden ill;
So often at twilight it does not seem far,
Not further than the first and far-off star;
All, all my life is built towards its token
Yet by its near far-offness I am broken.
For I am ever under something's spell,
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poem by Robert Nichols
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The Naiads' Music: From A Faun's Holiday
Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
For our kisses lightlier run
Than the traceries of the sun
By the lolling water cast
Up grey precipices vast,
Lifting smooth and waem and steep
Out of the palely shimmering deep.
Come, ye sorrowul, and take
Kisses that are but half awake:
For here are eyes O softer far
Than the blossom of the star
Upon the mothy twilit waters,
And here are mouths whose gentle laughters
Are but the echoes of the deep
Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.
Come, ye sorrowful, and see
The raindrops flaming goldenly
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poem by Robert Nichols
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The Approach
1.
In the Grass: Halt by the Wayside
In my tired, helpless body
I feel my sunk heart ache;
But suddenly, loudly
The far, the great guns shake.
Is it sudden terror
Burdens my heart? My hand
Flies to my head. I listen…
And do not understand.
Is death so near, then?
From this blazing light,
Do I plunge suddenly
Into vortex? Night?
Guns again! the quiet
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poem by Robert Nichols
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The Last Salute
In a far field, away from England, lies
A boy I friended with a care like love;
All day the wide earth aches, the keen wind cries,
The melancholy clouds drive on above.
There, separate from him by a little span
Two eagle cousins, generous, reckless, free,
Two Grenfells, lie, and my boy is made man,
One with these elder knights of chivalry.
Boy, who expected not this dreadful day,
Yet leaped, a soldier, at the sudden call,
Drank as your fathers, deeper though than they,
The soldier's cup of anguish, blood, and gall.
Not now as friend, but as a soldier, I
Salute you fallen. For the soldier's name
Our greatest honour is, if worthily
These wayward hearts assume and bear the same
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poem by Robert Nichols
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Battery Moving Up to a New Position from Rest Camp:Dawn
Not a sign of life we rouse
In any square close-shuttered house
That flanks the road we amble down
Toward far trenches through the town.
The dark, snow-slushy, empty street....
Tingle of frost in brow and feet....
Horse-breath goes dimly up like smoke.
No sound but the smacking stroke
As a sergeant flings each arm
Out and across to keep him warm,
And the sudden splashing crack
Of ice-pools broken by our track.
More dark houses, yet no sign
Of life....And axle's creak and whine....
The splash of hooves, the strain of trace....
Clatter: we cross the market place.
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poem by Robert Nichols
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The Tower
It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs
The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem
Her white showery petals; none regarded them;
The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;
Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.
Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,
Save where in a turret's lantern beamed a grave, still light;
There in the topmost chamber a gold-eyed lamp was lit --
Marvellous lamp in darkness, informing, redeeming it!
For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, blessed and doomed,
Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed;
And spreading his hands in blesing, as one soon to be dead,
He put soft enchantment into spare wine and bread.
The hearts of the disciples were broken and full of tears,
Because their lord, the spearless, was hedgéd about with spears;
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poem by Robert Nichols
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