Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

  Beyond enraged idleness to enraged idleness.

  With no more hours of hope, and none of regret,

  Before each sun may rise, you salute it for set:

  Trudge, body!

  MUSIC AT NIGHT

  Voices in gentle harmony

  Rise from the slopes above the midnight sea,

  And every sound comes true and clear,

  And the song’s old:

  It charms the wisest ear –

  Night and the sea and music bind

  Such forced perfection on the darkened mind

  That, ah now, with that dying fall

  All truth seems told

  And one light shines for all –

  The Moon, who from the hill-top streams

  On each white face and throat her absent beams.

  The song-enchanted fellows send

  Their chords of gold

  Rippling beyond time’s end.

  They link arms and all evils fly:

  The flesh is tamed, the spirit circles high.

  Each angel softly sings his part

  Not proud, not bold,

  Dream-ecstasied in heart.

  But lamp-light glitters through the trees:

  Lamp-light will check these minor harmonies,

  And soon the busy Sun will rise

  And blaze and scold

  From the same hill-top skies.

  WITHOUT PAUSE

  Without cause and without

  Pause blankness follows, turning

  Man once more into

  An autumn elm or

  Ash in autumn mist,

  His arms upraised, no

  Heart or head, moreover

  Nothing heard but now

  This constant dropping always

  Of such heavy drops

  Distilled on finger-tips

  From autumn mist and

  Nowhere immanence or end

  Or pause or cause,

  But all is blankness

  Seeming headache, yet not

  Headache, yet not heartache:

  Wanting heart and head,

  The tree man – false,

  Because the angry sap

  Has faded down again

  To tree roots dreading

  Cold, and these abandoned

  Leaves lie fallen flat

  To make mould for

  The pretty primroses that

  Spring again in Spring

  With little faces blank,

  And sap again then

  Rising proves the pain

  Of Spring a fancy

  Not attempted, no: so,

  Until the frantic trial,

  Blankness only made for

  Pondering and tears against

  That sudden lurch-away.

  THE CLOCK MAN

  The clocks are ticking with good will:

  They make a cheerful sound.

  I am that temporizer still

  Who sends their hands around,

  By fresh experiments with birth and age

  Teasing the times each time to further courage.

  You who are grateful for your birth

  To hours that ticked you free

  (And gratefully relapse to earth)

  Your thanks are due to me –

  Which I accept, inured to shame, and mock

  My vows to timelessness, sworn with the clock.

  THE COMMONS OF SLEEP

  That ancient common-land of sleep

  Where the close-herded nations creep

  On all fours, tongue to ground –

  Be sure that every night or near

  I, sheep-like too, go wandering there

  And wake to have slept sound.

  How comfortable can be misrule

  Of dream that whirls the antic spool

  Of sense-entangling twist,

  Where proud in idiot state I sit

  At skirmish of ingenious wit,

  My nape by fairies kissed.

  ‘From the world’s loving-cup to drink,

  In sleep, can be no shame,’ I think.

  ‘Sleep has no part in shame.’

  But to lie down in hope to find

  Licence for devilishness of mind –

  Will sleeping bear the blame?

  For at such welcome dream extends

  Its hour beyond where sleeping ends

  And eyes are washed for day,

  Till mind and mind’s own honour seem

  That nightmare dream-within-the-dream

  Which brings the most dismay.

  Then lamps burn red and glow-worm green

  And naked dancers grin between

  The rusting bars of love.

  Loud and severe the drunken jokes

  Go clanging out in midnight strokes.

  I weep: I wake: I move.

  WHAT TIMES ARE THESE?

  Against the far slow fields of white,

  A cloud came suddenly in sight

  And down the valley passed,

  Compact and grey as bonfire smoke –

  This one cloud only, like a joke,

  It flew so fast.

  And more: the shape, no inexact

  Idle half-likeness but a fact

  Which all my senses knew,

  Was a great dragon’s and instead

  Of fangs it had the scoffing head

  Of an old Jew.

  What times are these that visions bear

  So plainly down the morning air

  With wings and scales and beard?

  I stared, and quick, a swirl of wind

  Caught at his head: he writhed and thinned,

  He disappeared.

  The last that stayed were the wide wings

  And long tail barbed with double stings:

  These drifted on alone

  Over the watch-tower and the bay

  So out to open sea, where they

  Did not fade soon.

  I knew him well, the Jew, for he

  Was honest Uncle Usury

  Who lends you blood for blood:

  His dragon’s claws were keen and just

  To bleed the body into dust,

  As the bond stood.

  What times are these – to be allowed

  This ancient vision of grey cloud

  Gone in a casual breath?

  The times of the torn dragon-wing

  Still threatening seaward and the sting

  Still poised for death.

  From Collected Poems

  (1938)

  THE CHRISTMAS ROBIN

  The snows of February had buried Christmas

  Deep in the woods, where grew self-seeded

  The fir-trees of a Christmas yet unknown,

  Without a candle or a strand of tinsel.

  Nevertheless when, hand in hand, plodding

  Between the frozen ruts, we lovers paused

  And ‘Christmas trees!’ cried suddenly together,

  Christmas was there again, as in December.

  We velveted our love with fantasy

  Down a long vista-row of Christmas trees,

  Whose coloured candles slowly guttered down

  As grandchildren came trooping round our knees.

  But he knew better, did the Christmas robin –

  The murderous robin with his breast aglow

  And legs apart, in a spade-handle perched:

  He prophesied more snow, and worse than snow.

  CERTAIN MERCIES

  Now must all satisfaction

  Appear mere mitigation

  Of an accepted curse?

  Must we henceforth be grateful

  That the guards, though spiteful,

  Are slow of foot and wit?

  That by night we may spread

  Over the plank bed

  A thin coverlet?

  That the rusty water

  In the unclean pitcher

  Our thirst quenches?

  That the rotten, detestable

  Food i
s yet eatable

  By us ravenous?

  That the prison censor

  Permits a weekly letter?

  (We may write: ‘We are well.’)

  That, with patience and deference,

  We do not experience

  The punishment cell?

  That each new indignity

  Defeats only the body,

  Pampering the spirit

  With obscure, proud merit?

  THE CUIRASSIERS OF THE FRONTIER

  Goths, Vandals, Huns, Isaurian mountaineers,

  Made Roman by our Roman sacrament,

  We can know little (as we care little)

  Of the Metropolis: her candled churches,

  Her white-gowned pederastic senators,

  The cut-throat factions of her Hippodrome,

  The eunuchs of her draped saloons.

  Here is the frontier, here our camp and place –

  Beans for the pot, fodder for horses,

  And Roman arms. Enough. He who among us

  At full gallop, the bowstring to his ear,

  Lets drive his heavy arrows, to sink

  Stinging through Persian corslets damascened,

  Then follows with the lance – he has our love.

  The Christ bade Holy Peter sheathe his sword,

  Being outnumbered by the Temple guard.

  And this was prudence, the cause not yet lost

  While Peter might persuade the crowd to rescue.

  Peter renegued, breaking his sacrament.

  With us the penalty is death by stoning,

  Not to be made a bishop.

  In Peter’s Church there is no faith nor truth,

  Nor justice anywhere in palace or court.

  That we continue watchful on the rampart

  Concerns no priest. A gaping silken dragon,

  Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God.

  We, not the City, are the Empire’s soul:

  A rotten tree lives only in its rind.

  CALLOW CAPTAIN

  The sun beams jovial from an ancient sky,

  Flooding the round hills with heroic spate.

  A callow captain, glaring, sword at thigh,

  Trots out his charger through the camp gate.

  Soon comes the hour, his marriage hour, and soon

  He fathers children, reigns with ancestors

  Who, likewise serving in the wars, won

  For a much-tattered flag renewed honours.

  A wind ruffles the book, and he whose name

  Was mine vanishes; all is at an end.

  Fortunate soldier: to be spared shame

  Of chapter-years unprofitable to spend,

  To ride off into reticence, nor throw

  Before the story-sun a long shadow.

  THE STRANGER

  He noted from the hill top,

  Fixing a cynic eye upon

  The stranger in the distance

  Up the green track approaching,

  She had a sure and eager tread;

  He guessed mere grace of body

  Which would not for unloveliness

  Of cheek or mouth or other feature

  Retribution pay.

  He watched as she came closer,

  And half-incredulously saw

  How lovely her face also,

  Her hair, her naked hands.

  Come closer yet, deception!

  But closer as she came, the more

  Unarguable her loveliness;

  He frowned and blushed, confessing slowly,

  No, it was no cheat.

  To find her foolish-hearted

  Would rid his baffled thought of her;

  But there was wisdom in that brow

  Of who might be a Muse.

  Then all abashed he dropped his head:

  For in his summer haughtiness

  He had cried lust at her for whom

  Through many deaths he had kept vigil,

  Wakeful for her voice.

  THE SMOKY HOUSE

  He woke to a smell of smoke.

  The house was burning.

  His room-mates reassured him:

  ‘Smouldering, not burning.’

  ‘Break no window,’ they warned,

  ‘Make no draught:

  Nobody wants a blaze.’

  Choking, they laughed

  At such a stubborn fellow

  Unresigned to smoke,

  To sore lungs and eyes –

  For them a joke –

  Yet who would not consent,

  At a cry or curse,

  That water on the smoulder

  Made the smoke worse.

  VARIABLES OF GREEN

  Grass-green and aspen-green,

  Laurel-green and sea-green,

  Fine-emerald-green,

  And many another hue:

  As green commands the variables of green

  So love my loves of you.

  THE GOBLET

  From this heroic skull buried

  Secretly in a tall ant-castle,

  Drawn out, stripped of its jawbone, blanched

  In sun all the hot summer,

  Mounted with bands of hammered gold,

  The eye-holes paned with crystal –

  From this bright skull, a hero’s goblet now,

  What wine is to drink?

  A dry draught, medicinal,

  Not the sweet must that flowed

  Too new between these lips

  When here were living lips,

  That pampered tongue

  When here was tasting tongue.

  But who shall be the drinker?

  That passionate man, his rival

  In endless love and battle,

  Who overcame him at the end?

  Or I, the avenging heir? I taste

  Wine from a dead man’s head

  Whose griefs were not my own?

  If I this skull a goblet made

  It was a pious duty, nothing more.

  Here is clean bone, and gold and crystal,

  So may the ghost sigh gratitude

  To drink his death, as I would mine.

  FIEND, DRAGON, MERMAID

  The only Fiend, religious adversary,

  Ceased in the end to plague me, dying

  By his own hand on a scarred mountain-top

  Full in my sight. His valedictory

  Was pity for me as for one whose house,

  Swept and garnished, now lay open

  As hospice for a score of lesser devils:

  I had no better friend than him, he swore.

  His extreme spasms were of earthquake force –

  They hurled me without sense on the sharp rocks;

  The corpse, ridiculous – that long, thin neck,

  Those long, thin, hairy legs, the sawdust belly –

  This same was Hell’s prince in his prime,

  And lamed me in his fall.

  Next of the ancient dragon I was freed

  Which was an emanation of my fears

  And in the Fiend’s wake followed always.

  An acid breeze puffed at his wings: he flew

  Deathward in cloudy blue and gold, frightful,

  Yet showing patches of webbed nothingness

  Like soap-bubbles before they burst –

  Which was a cause for smiling.

  Furious, he glared: ‘Confess, my dragon glory

  Was a resplendency that seared the gaze –

  All else mere candle-light and glowing ember!’

  The mermaid last, with long hair combed and coiled

  And childish-lovely face, swam slowly by.

  She called my name, pleading an answer,

  Yet knew that though my blood is salty still

  It swings to other tides than the old sea.

  ‘Greedy mermaid, are there no mariners

  To plunge into green water when you sing,

  That you should stretch your arms for me?

  Fain to forget all winds and weathers


  And perish in your beauty?’ So she turned

  With tears, affecting innocence:

  ‘Proud heart, where shall you find again

  So kind a breast as pillow for your woes,

  Or such soft lips? Your peace was my love’s care.’

  ‘Peace is no dream of mariners,’ I said.

  She dived; and quit of dragon, Fiend and her

  I turned my gaze to the encounter of

  The later genius, who of my pride and fear

  And love

  No monster made but me.

  FRAGMENT OF A LOST POEM

  O the clear moment, when from the mouth

  A word flies, current immediately

  Among friends; or when a loving gift astounds

  As the identical wish nearest the heart;

  Or when a stone, volleyed in sudden danger,

  Strikes the rabid beast full on the snout!

  Moments in never….

  GALATEA AND PYGMALION

  Galatea, whom his furious chisel

  From Parian stone had by greed enchanted,

  Fulfilled, so they say, Pygmalion’s longings:

  Stepped from the pedestal on which she stood,

  Bare in his bed laid her down, lubricious,

  With low responses to his drunken raptures,

  Enroyalled his body with her demon blood.

  Alas, Pygmalion had so well plotted

  The articulation of his woman monster

  That schools of eager connoisseurs beset

  Her single person with perennial suit;

  Whom she (a judgement on the jealous artist)

  Admitted rankly to a comprehension

  Of themes that crowned her own, not his repute.

  THE DEVIL’S ADVICE TO STORY-TELLERS

  Lest men suspect your tale to be untrue,

  Keep probability – some say – in view.

  But my advice to story-tellers is:

  Weigh out no gross of probabilities,

  Nor yet make diligent transcriptions of

  Known instances of virtue, crime or love.

  To forge a picture that will pass for true,

  Do conscientiously what liars do –

  Born liars, not the lesser sort that raid

  The mouths of others for their stock-in-trade:

  Assemble, first, all casual bits and scraps

  That may shake down into a world perhaps;

  People this world, by chance created so,

  With random persons whom you do not know –

  The teashop sort, or travellers in a train

  Seen once, guessed idly at, not seen again;

  Let the erratic course they steer surprise