Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme) by Robert Graves

  When in my first and loneliest love I saw

  The sun swim down in tears to meet the sea,

  When woods and clouds and mountains massed their awe

  To whelm the house of torment that was me,

  When spirits below the cromlech heard me pass,

  Belling their hate with such malignant cries

  That horror and anguish rustled through the grass

  And the very flowers glared up with oafish eyes,

  Then round I turned where rose the death-white Fay

  And knew her well that exercised her wand,

  That spurred my heart with rowellings day by day

  To the very reach of madness, and beyond,

  Thee, Moon, whom now I flout, by thought made bold,

  Naked, my Joseph’s garment in thy hold.

  FOUR CHILDREN

  As I lay quietly in the grass,

  Half dreaming, half awake,

  I saw four children barefoot pass

  Across the tufted brake:

  The sky was glass, the pools were glass,

  And not a leaf did shake.

  The autumn berries clustered thick,

  Seldom I met with more;

  I thought these children come to pick,

  As many picked before;

  Each had a long and crooked stick,

  And crowns of ash they wore.

  But not one berry did they take;

  Gliding, I watched them go

  Hand in hand across the brake

  With sallies to and fro.

  So half asleep and half awake

  I guessed what now I know.

  They were not children, live and rough,

  Nor phantoms of the dead,

  But spirits woven of airy stuff

  By wandering fancy led,

  Creatures of silence, fair enough

  No sooner seen than sped.

  THE BARGAIN

  The stable door was open wide:

  I heard voices, looked inside.

  Six candle-yellow birds were set

  In a cage of silver net,

  Shaking wing, preening feather,

  Whistling loudly all together.

  Two most ancient withered fairies

  Bartered rings against canaries,

  Haggled with a courteous cunning -

  Hinting, boasting, teasing, punning

  In a half-remembered tongue.

  ‘Too low an offer!’ ‘Times are bad.’

  ‘Too low!’ ‘By far the best you have had.’

  ‘Raise it!’ Then what a song was sung:

  ‘Dicky is a pretty lad!

  Dicky is a pretty lad!’

  But diamonds twinkled with light flung

  By twelve impatient golden wings,

  The younger merchant took the rings,

  Closed his bargain with a sigh,

  And sadly wished his flock ‘Goodbye.’

  Goodbye, goodbye, in fairy speech

  With a sugar-peck for each

  Unsuspecting bright canary.

  ‘Fare you well.’

  A sudden airy

  Gust of midnight slammed the door.

  Out went the lights: I heard no more.

  IN THE BEGINNING WAS A WORD

  The difficulty was, it was

  Simple, as simple as it seemed;

  Needing no scrutinizing glass,

  No intense light to be streamed

  Upon it. It said what it said

  Singly, without backthought or whim,

  With all the strictness of the dead,

  Past reason and past synonym.

  But they, too dull to understand,

  Laboriously improvised

  A mystic allegory, and

  A meaning at last recognized:

  A revelation and a cause,

  Crowding the cluttered stage again

  With saints’ and sinners’ lies and laws

  For a new everlasting reign.

  THE BAIT

  My wish, even my ambition

  (For such ambition spells no diminution

  Of virtue, strict in self-possession),

  Is not, to deaden the mind

  To be resigned

  To take the insistent bait

  To be hauled out, hooked and hulking;

  Is not, to refuse the bait,

  To be angry, to go hungry,

  To lodge in the mud, to be sulking:

  It is, I would surge toward these troubles

  Trailing a row of easy bubbles;

  Would gulp the bait, the hook, rod, reel,

  Fisherman and creel,

  Converting even the landing-net’s tough mesh,

  The spaced and regular knots, to wholesome flesh;

  And would subside again, resume my occupation,

  With ‘yes and no’ for what showed blank negation:

  So, would remain just fish.

  That, or something of that, is my wish.

  AN INDEPENDENT

  The warring styles both claim him as their man

  But undisturbed, resisting either pull

  He paints each picture on its own right plan

  As unexpected as inevitable.

  They while admitting that this treatment is

  Its own justification, take offence

  At his unmodish daily practices:

  Granting him genius, they deny him sense.

  He grinds his paints in his own studio,

  Has four legitimate children (odd!) and thinks

  Of little else; he dresses like a crow,

  Keeps with his wife and neither smokes nor drinks.

  When painting is discussed, he takes no part,

  Pretends he’s dull; and who can call his bluff?

  The styles protest, while honouring his art,

  He will not take Art seriously enough.

  [THE UNTIDY MAN]

  There was a man, a very untidy man,

  Whose fingers could nowhere be found to put in his tomb.

  He had rolled his head far underneath the bed:

  He had left his legs and arms lying all over the room.

  1934–1939

  MIDSUMMER DUET*

  First Voice

  O think what joy that now

  Have burst the pent grenades of summer

  And out sprung all the angry hordes

  To be but stuttering storm of bees

  On lisping swoon of flowers –

  That such winged agitation

  From midge to nightingale astir

  These lesser plagues of sting and song

  But looses on the world, our world.

  O think what peace that now

  Our roads from house to sea go strewn

  With fast fatigue – time’s burning footsounds,

  Devilish in our winter ears,

  Cooled to a timeless standstill

  As ourselves from house to sea we move

  Unmoving, on dumb shores to pledge

  New disbelief in ills to come

  More monstrous than the old extremes.

  Second Voice

  And what regret that now

  The dog-star has accomplished wholly

  That promise April hinted with

  Faint blossom on her hungry branches,

  And pallid hedgerow shoots?

  Exuberance so luscious

  Of fruit and sappy briar

  Disgusts: midsummer’s passion chokes

  ‘No more!’ – a trencher heaped too high.

  And O what dearth that now

  We have sufficient dwelling here

  Immune to hopes gigantical

  That once found lodgement in our heart.

  What if less shrewd we were

  And the Dog’s mad tooth evaded not –

  But quick, the sweet froth on our lips,

  Reached at fulfilments whose remove

  Gave muscle to our faith at least?

  First Voice

  Let prophecy
now cease

  In that from mothering omens came

  Neither the early dragon nor the late

  To startle sleeping errantries

  Or blaze unthinkable futures.

  The births have not been strange enough;

  Half-pestilential miseries

  At ripeness failed of horrid splendour.

  Our doomsday is a rabbit-age

  Lost in the sleeve of expectation.

  Let winter be less sharp

  In that the heats of purpose

  Have winter foreflight in their wings,

  Shaking a frostiness of thought

  Over those aestive fancies

  Which now so inwardly belie

  (Their fury tepid to our minds)

  The outward boast of season –

  We need not press the cold this year

  Since warmth has grown so honest.

  Second Voice

  Let talk of wonders cease

  Now that outlandish realms can hold

  No prodigies so marvellous as once

  The ten-years-lost adventurer

  Would stretch our usual gaze with.

  The golden apple’s rind offends

  Our parks, and dew-lapped mountaineers

  Unbull themselves by common physic.

  There comes no news can take us from

  Loyalty to this latter sameness.

  Let the bold calendar

  Too garrulous in counting

  Fortunes of solar accident

  Weary, and festive pipes be soft.

  Madness rings not so far now

  Around the trysting-oak of time;

  Midsummer’s gentler by the touch

  Of other tragic pleasures.

  We need not write so large this year

  The dances or the dirges.

  First Voice

  But what, my friend, of love –

  If limbs revive to overtake

  The backward miles that memory

  Tracks in corporeal chaos?

  Shall you against the lull of censoring mind

  Not let the bones of nature run

  On fleshlorn errands, journey-proud –

  If ghosts go rattling after kisses,

  Shall your firmed mouth not quiver with

  Desires it once spoke beauty by?

  And what of beauty, friend –

  If eyes constrict to clear our world

  Of doubt-flung sights and ether’s phantom spaces

  Cobwebbed where miserly conceit

  Hoarded confusion like infinity?

  If vision has horizon now,

  Shall you not vex the tyrant eyes

  To pity, pleading blindness?

  Second Voice

  But what, my friend, of death,

  That has the dark sense and the bright,

  Illumes the sombre hour of thought,

  Fetches the flurry of bat-souls?

  Shall you not at this shriven perfect watch

  Survey my death-selves with a frown

  And scold that I am not more calm?

  Shall you not on our linking wisdoms

  Loathe the swart shapes I living wear

  In being dead, yet not a corpse?

  And what of jest and play –

  If caution against waggishness

  (Lest I look backward) makes my mood too canting?

  Shall you not mock my pious ways,

  Finding in gloom no certain grace or troth,

  And raise from moony regions of your smile

  Light spirits, nimbler on the toe,

  Which nothing are -I no one?

  First Voice

  Suppose the cock were not to crow

  At whitening of night

  To warn that once again

  The spectrum of incongruence

  Will reasonably unfold

  From day’s indulgent prism?

  Second Voice

  Suppose the owl were not to hoot

  At deepening of sleep

  To warn that once again

  The gospel of oblivion

  Will pompously be droned

  From pulpit-tops of dream?

  First Voice

  And shall the world our world have end

  In miracles of general palsy,

  Abject apocalyptic trances

  Wherein creature and element

  Surrender being in a God-gasp?

  Both Voices

  Or shall the world our world renew

  At worn midsummer’s temporal ailing,

  Marshal the season which senescence

  Proclaimed winter but we now know

  For the first nip of mind’s hereafter?

  MAJORCAN LETTER, 1935*

  This year we are all back again in time –

  For a year: excellent: in our zeal

  We had abandoned, like new converts,

  Certain practices which serve good sense

  Under all cosmic flags. The later mind,

  For instance, has a need of News as constant

  As the earlier; strangers inhabit

  Every liveable condition, and we cannot

  Regulate our own affairs without at least

  Such distancing (if not entire annulment)

  Of theirs as with the reading of our papers

  We had learnt to exert on foreign conduct.

  A talent not to let lapse: the years

  Increased the alien volume, few matters

  Remained domestic. The need of privacy

  Is as strong as ever, nor to be satisfied

  Without a public universe to wall

  The central reservations. Excellent then,

  Those habits of concern with wars, politics,

  Impromptu heroes, successes, tragedies,

  All weather-mystic to the personal heart,

  Substance of outer flush and evanescence;

  Scientific rediscoveries of truths

  Long known by natural names and numbers;

  Theories of God, Finance, Verse and Diet

  Called ‘modern’ because indeed many but now

  First reflect on these primitive subjects,

  As if wisdom had ceased to descend

  And life were the amazed infant again.

  It is well to look out from our discreet windows

  With a still curious eye. It is well

  To look upon the stale wonders and tumults

  And, knowing the recent for ancient,

  Remember how we are surrounded ever

  As yesterday and once by the remote

  Great populations of infinity;

  And to keep advised how small-immediate

  The space of final conference remains.

  Communism is a mighty plan

  For turning bread into a doctrine.

  And each shall have as much doctrine

  As bread: what could be simpler?

  Religion was never so accurate.

  But haven’t they forgotten the wine?

  Perhaps, after all, as they say,

  Drinking is a lost art.

  One still sees interesting recipes

  For soups, but on the whole

  The world is a drier place.

  Ships do not merely no longer splash:

  The very ocean has become

  An abstraction whereon hotels

  Convey the traveller to hotels

  In the true spirit of competition,

  Whose devices are more humane

  Than Nature’s, which after all

  Is too literal-minded

  For the comfortable accommodation

  Of man’s ubiquitous imagination.

  In fact, water is an extinct element

  Save for the quaint trickle in the taps

  Wherewith they lay the ghosts

  Of former hygienes, puny

  To the present genii

  Of vapours, creams and lotions.

  Drinking is a lost art,

  Baptism a lost rite,


  Water a lost element.

  Seaside balsam soothes away

  The wetness sustained

  In the exorcizing of wetness,

  With the assistance of the sun.

  And, the waves having by argument

  Of logical progress from wet to dry

  Undergone vigorous evaporation,

  The world-at-large takes to the air-at-large,

  In more generous fulfilment

  Of the historic farewell

  Governing the scattering of peoples

  And senses: with a goodbye

  More absolute than the mariner’s

  Salt tear and world-ho.

  We are perfectly informed, you see,

  In the character and manner

  Of life as it is now lived

  Around us and around us

  And now and now and now

  Along the ever-widening

  Periphery of this modest

  Memorial to coherence

  Wherein ourselves have domicile.

  (The three elements involved

  In questions of this kind,

  Our lawyer tells us,

  Are Nationality, Residence

  And Domicile. By Nationality

  Is meant the political relationship

  Existing between ourselves

  And the sovereign states to which we owe –

  But we, and our respective states,

  Consider these formalities

  Sacred to unpleasant incidents

  Abroad, where our Consuls maintain us

  In the liberty of feeling at home

  Wherever the birth-days guaranteed

  Mortal by our respective states

  Find us in our post-national age.

  Residence merely implies

  The place we happen to dwell in

  At a particular moment:

  A word for the body absent

  On the body’s errands–

  ‘A purely physical fact’

  Our lawyer explicitly avows.

  Each sleeps in many beds

  During a lifetime of acquiring

  Command over the limbs,

  Till we are able, without regret,

  To exact that permanence

  Which our lawyer calls ‘Domicil’–

  He spells it without ‘e’, please note,

  Terribly, insisting the spirit

  Of the law before the letter.

  ‘Domicil is a combination

  Of facts and intention.’

  We intend to remain thus

  Resident in definite us

  ‘For an indefinite time’–

  Time, after the legal years

  Have been passed, the numbers crossed out,

  And no new counting can be done,

  Becomes ‘an indefinite time’,