Complete Poems 3 (Robert Graves Programme)

The body being no poet.

  Yet it had been the woman

  Who drew herself apart,

  Cushioned on her divan,

  And lent some bolder man

  Her body, not her heart.

  When seven long years were over

  How would their story end?

  No change of heart for either,

  Mere changes in the weather,

  A lover being no friend.

  THE FIELD-POSTCARD

  475 Graves (Robert) AUTOGRAPH POSTCARD signed (written in pencil), I.R.W. Fus. B.E.F. Nov 27, ’15 to Edward Marsh, autograph address panel on verso signed, Post Office and Censor’s postmarks £30 ‘In the last few days I’ve been made a captain and shifted here. I won’t get any leave till January at the earliest…’

  Back in ’15, when life was harsh

  And blood was hourly shed,

  I reassured Sir Edward Marsh

  So far I was not dead.

  My field-postcard duly arrived,

  It seems, at Gray’s Inn Square

  Where Eddie, glad I still survived,

  Ruffled his thinning hair…

  A full half century out of sight

  It lay securely hid

  Till Francis Edwards with delight

  Sold it for thirty quid.

  But who retained the copyright,

  The invaluable copyright?

  In common law I did.

  IF NO CUCKOO SINGS

  And if no cuckoo sings,

  What can I care, or you?

  Each heart will yet beat true

  While outward happenings

  Kaleidoscopically continue.

  Year in, year out, we lie

  Each in a lonely bed

  With vows of true love read

  Like prayers, though silently,

  To a well-starred and open sky.

  Fierce poems of our past –

  How can they ever die,

  Condemned by love to last

  Word for word and exactly

  Under a wide and changeful sky?

  MOUNTAIN LOVERS

  We wandered diligently and widely

  On mountains by the sea,

  Greeting no now that was not always,

  Nor any I but we,

  And braved a turbulence of nights and days

  From which no honest lover strays,

  However stark the adversity.

  THREE TIMES IN LOVE

  You have now fallen three times in love

  With the same woman, first indeed blindly

  And at her blind insistence;

  Next with your heart alive to the danger

  Of what hers might conceal, although such passion

  Strikes nobly and for ever;

  Now at last, deep in dream, transported

  To her rose garden on the high ridge,

  Assured that there she can deny you

  No deserved privilege,

  However controvertible or new.

  THE SENTENCE

  Is this a sentence passed upon us both

  For too ambitious love in separation:

  Not as an alien intervention or intrusion

  But as heaviness and silence,

  As a death in absence?

  We have lived these seven years beyond recourse,

  Each other’s single love in separation:

  A whispered name before sleep overtakes us

  And before morning wakes us

  At some far-distant station.

  Let us not hold that either drew apart

  In weariness or anger or adventure,

  Or the resolve to nurse a single heart….

  Call it an irresistible thunderbolt.

  It was not my fault, love, nor was it your fault.

  SPRING 1974

  None yet have been good jocund days,

  Clear dawning days,

  Days of leisure and truth

  Reflecting love’s sharp gaze,

  Being born, alas, in an evil month

  By fetid marsh or by fouled river

  Maligned in Hell, accursed in Heaven,

  Always by love unshriven,

  Void still of honest praise.

  ADVENT OF SUMMER

  You have lived long but over-lonely,

  My grey-haired fellow-poet

  Sighing for new melodies

  In face of sullen grief,

  With wanings of old friendship,

  With sullen repetition –

  For who can thrive in loneliness,

  Accepting its cold needs?

  Let love dawn with the advent

  Of a cool, showery summer

  With no firm, fallen apricots

  Nor pods on any beanstalk,

  Nor strawberries in blossom,

  Nor cherries on the boughs.

  Let us deny the absurdities

  Of every true summer:

  Let us never live ill-used

  Or derided by new strangers;

  Let us praise the vagrant thrushes

  And listen to their songs.

  THE UNPENNED POEM

  Should I wander with no frown, these idle days,

  My dark hair trespassing on its pale brow –

  If so, without companionship or praise,

  Must I revisit marshes where frogs croak

  Like me, mimicking penitential ways?

  Are you still anchored to my slow, warm heart

  After long years of drawing nightly nearer

  And visiting our haunted room, timely

  Ruffling its corners with love’s hidden mop?

  And still must we not part?

  What is a poem if as yet unpenned

  Though truthful and emancipated still

  From what may never yet appear,

  From the flowery riches of still silent song,

  From golden hours of a wakeful Spring?

  Approach me, Rhyme; advise me, Reason!

  The wind blows gently from the mountain top.

  Let me display three penetrative wounds

  White and smooth in this wrinkled skin of mine,

  Still unacknowledged by the flesh beneath.

  A poem may be trapped here suddenly,

  Thrusting its adder’s head among the leaves,

  Without reason or rhyme, dumb –

  Or if not dumb, then with a single voice

  Robbed of its chorus.

  Here looms November. When last did I approach

  Paper with ink, pen, and the half truth?

  Advise me, Reason!

  THE GREEN WOODS OF UNREST

  Let the weeks end as well they must

  Not with clouds of scattered dust

  But in pure certainty of sun –

  And with gentle winds outrun

  By the love that we contest

  In these green woods of unrest.

  You, love, are beauty’s self indeed,

  Never the harsh pride of need.

  Uncollected Poems

  (1910–1974)

  JUVENILIA: 1910–1914

  A POT OF WHITE HEATHER

  Thou, a poor woman’s fairing, white heather,

  Witherest from the ending

  Of summer’s bliss to the sting

  Of winter’s grey beginning.

  Which is better, Dame Nature? A human

  Woman’s oft-uttered rapture

  O’er thy dear gift, and the pure

  Love that enshrines a treasure?

  Or all the sweet plant loses, where grandly

  A friendly mountain rises,

  And a land of heather-trees

  About its knees reposes?

  THE MOUNTAIN SIDE AT EVENING

  Now even falls

  And fresh, cold breezes blow

  Adown the grey-green mountain side

  Strewn with rough boulders. Soft and low

  Night speaks, her tongue untied

  Darkness to Darkness calls.

  ’Tis now men say

/>   From rugged piles of stones

  Steal Shapes and Things that should be still;

  Green terror ripples through our bones,

  Our inmost heart-strings thrill

  And yearn for careless day.

  THE WILL O’ THE WISP

  See a gleam in the gloaming – out yonder

  It wand’reth bright flaming;

  Its force – that is a fierce thing!

  It draweth men to drowning.

  THE KING’s SON

  Daintily stepped the son of the king

  Through the palace-gates flung wide,

  He breathed of the fine fresh scents of Spring,

  As he walked by the river side;

  But deep in his heart was blossoming

  The Tiger-lily of pride.

  His eyes were a royal purple-grey,

  And his sweet lips harboured a smile,

  As he dreamed of his kingdom far away,

  Of his wonderful Southern isle;

  But evil lay in the purple-grey,

  And the smile was a tyrant’s smile.

  ‘The king, my sire, has given me

  The fairest isle in all his lands;

  Three-score stout vessels fringe her sands,

  And seven-score guard the sea.

  Thither I’ll bid my captains bold

  Bring droves of slaves, and thrice a day

  A hundred heads I’ll blow away

  With my great gun of gold.

  My squires will take the shattered skulls

  And bind them with a golden chain,

  To whiten in the sun and rain,

  From my palace pinnacles.

  O’er that fair isle my fancy roves,

  She shall be clothed in majesty,

  I’ll pave her paths with ivory,

  And gem-bedeck her groves.’

  He mused by the river, foes forgot,

  While the wind in his love-locks blew;

  But an hairy arm from the reeds upshot,

  And dragged him down by the shoe….

  The king’s own brother plotted the plot,

  And the isle no boy-king knew.

  THE MISER OF SHENHAM HEATH

  A miser lived on Shenham Heath,

  As lean and grey he was as death.

  All children feared his long grey beard,

  His toes peeped from the boots beneath.

  Within the thatch he kept his store,

  A thousand pounds of gold and more;

  And every night by candle light

  Would take and count them, o’er and o’er.

  It chanced one chill November night,

  He told the tale by candle light,

  When sudden fled from heart and head

  The lust for guineas round and bright.

  He shivered, rose. Though he was old,

  And though the waters glimmered cold,

  A plunge he took in Shenham Brook

  And washed away the taint of gold.

  He cast his clouts and donned instead

  A suit he’d worn when he was wed.

  The cloth was new, of red and blue;

  A feathered hat adorned his head.

  He rose at dawning of the day,

  That none might meet him on his way.

  To Chert he went and money spent

  But was not minded there to stay.

  He bade a barber shave his chin,

  And rode a-horse to Shenham Inn

  In proper pride. The neighbours cried:

  ‘A lord! A lord! but gruesome thin!’

  Nor from that day forth did he cease

  Feeding the countryside like geese:

  He lavished gold on young and old –

  Aye, even to his last gold piece!

  A pauper lives on Shenham Heath,

  As lean and grey he is as death;

  All people fear to view him near,

  His toes peep from his boots beneath.

  RONDEAU

  Word comes of a pursuing robber-band

  From great Bokhara or from Samarkand.

  With tightened belly-girth and loosened rein

  The gallant, speedy dromedary-train

  Pounds with broad feet the soft-embosomed sand;

  And hearts are by such panic fear unmanned,

  It hounds them onward while they yet can stand,

  With mingled snarl and cry and blow and strain,

  Southward away.

  So, as I watch from my far Northern strand,

  High o’er the waves sweep by on either hand

  Great gibbous cloud-beasts, merchandized with rain

  From chilly Northern seas to thirsty Spain,

  Wind-chased in frightened rout o’er sea, o’er land,

  Southward away.

  ’AM AND ADVANCE: A COCKNEY STUDY

  When we was wed my ’Erbert sed

  ‘Wot? Give ’em ’am? Good Lord!

  Them wedding guests can beat their breasts,

  But ’am we can’t afford.’

  When ’Erbert died, Lord, ’ow I cried!

  But ’arf them tears was sham.

  ‘At ’is bedside,’ I thinks with pride,

  ‘The mourners they ’as ’Am.’

  PEEPING TOM

  I sat in my chamber yesternight;

  I lit the lamp, I drew the blind,

  And scratched with a quill at paper white;

  With Mistress Bess was all my mind!

  But stormy gusts had rent the blind

  And you were peering from behind,

  Peeping Tom in the skies afar –

  Bold, inquisitive, impudent star!

  Fair Bess was leaning o’er the well,

  When down there dropped her store-room key.

  A bucket lowered me where it fell;

  Invisible, I yet could see

  To blow her kisses secretly.

  But down the shaft you laughed in glee,

  Peeping Tom in the skies afar –

  Bold, inquisitive, impudent star!

  To-night I walk with Sweetheart Bess,

  And love-glance follows love-glance swift;

  I gather her in a soft caress,

  With joy my eyes to heaven uplift.

  But through the scudding vapour-drift

  My mocker finds a fleeting rift,

  Peeping Tom in the skies afar –

  Bold, inquisitive, impudent star!

  THE BALLAD OF THE WHITE MONSTER

  We drave before a boisterous wind

  For twenty days and three.

  Stout was the barque wherein we sailed,

  Shipmen from Normandie.

  O carpenters, go take your tools

  To patch the good ship’s side.

  Ceased is the wind whereon we drave;

  The swelling waves subside.

  The carpenters ’gan take their tools

  To patch the good ship’s side:

  They caulked the gaping seams also,

  To keep therefrom the tide.

  But as they caulked the gaping seams

  With mighty craft and care,

  Writhed from the oily sea beneath,

  White serpents everywhere.

  Oh, be these worms or serpents strange

  Thus rising from the sea?

  Nay, ’tis a terrible monstér

  Whose snaky arms they be.

  The fish from out the oily waves

  Heaved forth his vast bodie,

  And seized the hapless carpenters

  To pull them to the sea.

  Come save us, save us, shipmates all,

  Save us from this monstér

  That hath seizèd us with his white, white arms,

  An inch we may not stir.

  ’Tis they have ta’en their trusty swords

  And fought right valiantlie,

  The creature twined about the mast,

  Most terrible to see.

  The mariners ’gan smite and hack

  To save the carpenters
,

  And swore their blows they’d not abate

  For seven such monstérs.

  They hacked away the slimy flesh

  And gared the monster flee,

  Who took with him the carpenters

  To perish in the sea.

  He sank beneath the yeasty waves,

  But erst a mariner

  Had gougèd out with a bony thumb

  An eye of the monstér.

  A wind arose, and back we sailed

  To France right merrilie,

  And thanked the Saints we fed no fish

  At bottom of the sea.

  THE FUTURE

  Shepherd. ‘Little Lamb of the Spring, in your pale-hued mountainy

  meadow,

  By the rough wall bramble-bound mortarless couched in

  the shadow,

  Lamb of the white hyacinthine fleece, give your heart to

  this saying:

  Life for a lamb is a Year with his seasons. The Spring is for playing,

  Summer for love, and the Colds for decaying.

  ‘You will grow ere long, my delicate dainty creature –’

  Lamb. ‘As your Southdown Beast, not a sheep, but an insult to

  nature,

  Loving the plains, large-trunked, foul, smutty-faced? I

  such another?’

  Shepherd. ‘No, little friend, but a ewe, slim, gentle and fair as your

  mother.’

  Lamb. ‘That would be good, to become like my mother.’

  Shepherd. ‘And the little white ram that is butting his fellow out yonder

  Will be lover and lord in the Summer: beside him you’ll

  wander

  Out o’er the open summer-clad hills through harebell and

  heather….

  I will recall this day: I will laugh to behold you together.’

  Lamb. ‘Love? What is Love, thus to keep us together?’

  ALCAICS ADDRESSED TO MY STUDY FAUNA

  Mine eye commends thee, Japanese elephant,

  Bright body, proud trunk, wrought by a silver-smith:

  Thee too, O swart-cheeked elfin rider,

  Bought for a couple of Greek Iambics.

  Fair wooden doe-deer, chiselled in Switzerland,

  Why starest sad-eyed down from my cup-board top?

  ‘Once, lord, a stag ten-tyned, tremendous

  Shielded my side – now the dust-cart holds him!’

  Green china kit-cat, hailing from Chester-town,

  Sweet mouthed thou smilest after the Cheshire way,