Robert Nichols

“ The earth sleeps. Sleeps the newly-buried clay
Or doth divinity trouble it to live alway?
No voice uplifts from under the rapt crust.
The dust cries to the unregarding dust.
Over the hill the stopped notes of twin reeds
Speak like drops from an old wound that bleeds:
A yokel's pipe an ancient pastoral sings
Above the innumerable murmur of hid wings.
I hear the cadence, sorrowful and sweet,
The oldest burthen of the earth repeat:
All love, all passion, all strife, all delight
Are but the dreams that haunt earth's visioned night. ”

“ English poetry is not a rhythm of sound, but a rhythm of ideas, and the flow of attention-stresses (i.e., varying qualities of words and cadence) which determines its beauty is inseparably connected with the thought; for each of them is a judgment of identity, or a judgment of relation, or an expression of relation, and not a thing of mere empty sound.... He who would think of it as a pleasing arrangement of vocal sounds has missed all chance of ever understanding its meaning. There awaits him only the barren generalities of a foreign prosody, tedious, pedantic, fruitless. ”

“ Now arched dark boughs hang dim and still;
The deep dew glistens up the hill;
Silence trembles. All is still.
Now the sweet siren of the woods,
Philomel, passionately broods,
Or, darkling, hymns love's wildest moods.
Danaë, fainting in her tower,
Feels a sudden sun swim lower,
Gasps beneath the starry shower.
Venus in the pomegranate grove
Flutters like a fluttering dove
Under young Adonis' love.
Leda longs until alight
In the reeds those wings of white
She hears beat the upper night. ”

“ The high-flung timbrels pulse and knock;
We follow in a dancing flock,
Touching each other's finger-tips,
While from between our parted lips
The solemn melodies repeat
The rhythm of our shaken feet.
Then faster! and the round we trace,
Hair flowing from elated face,
Eyes lit, breast bare, with lifted knees,
And hands that toss as toss the trees....
And slow again ... with cumulate motion,
As the long draw and plunge of ocean
Bursting in a cloud of spray
Up a white, deserted bay
Of the sun-circled green Bermooths,
Whose blistering sands the cool foam soothes.... ”

“ Is it love? love went by dumb.
Is it sleep? but I would not sleep.
[Pg 64]
Must I fare, then, in fear and fever
On a journey become thrice far—
Whose sun has gone down for ever,
Whose night brings no guiding star?
The wind roars, and an ashen beam
Waving up shrinks away in haste.
The waves crash. The star's trickling gleam
Travels the warring waste. ”

“ The endlessness of sorrow, the eternal solace of love;
And lifting the earthly tokens, wine and sorrowful bread,
He bade them sup and remember one who lived and was dead.
And they could not restrain their weeping.
But one rose up to depart,
Having weakness and hate of weakness raging within his heart,
[Pg 148] And bowed to the robed assembly whose eyes gleamed wet in the light.
Judas arose and departed: night went out to the night.
Then Jesus lifted his voice like a fountain in an ocean of tears,
And comforted his disciples and calmed and allayed their fears. ”

“ Avaunt, grief! Descend, O holy
Fierce Bacchic rapture, divine folly!
XV
Of the Faun's Further Wanderings.
Forth from the forest wend I slowly,
While in my ears yet rings the holy
Dithyramb. The noon is past,
But the sun rages. There is cast
A dumbness yet o'er earth and sky.
Down to the river then will I,
Slowly about its depths to swim,
While the stream fondles every limb
And soothes its ache. ”

“ No word breaks the air that smothers,
Lest we miss
The dull heart-beat of the earth below each other's,
And the soft kiss
Of breathless heather upon heather, while the sun
Beats on us encouraging the swiftening blood,
Till up the limbs and through the ears it run,
A thin, red singing flood.
Love hath put in me might,
That was so weak;
I am strong with light,
My senses seek [Pg 182]
Something indefinable, afar;
They go wandering, and return....
With the light drunk off a star
They calmly burn,
Even as the immense sun burns on us
Till evening turns watery those beams of his ”

“ Ah, the long way of Love, but Love comes home!
The silver river wanders and circles time out of mind,
Yet turns at length where the sea tosses her smoking sheaves
(All things come unto him whose heart believes) .
So golden-feathered Love beats his high course, though blind,
Until that hour
When, downward stooping through the flaming shower,
Into the heart he come.
Ah, the long way of Love, but Love comes home! ”

“ Golden now the glowing moon,
Diana over Endymion
Downward bends as in a swoon.
Wherefore, since the gods agree,
Youth is sweet and Night is free,
And Love pleasure, should not we?
The Faun is struck with Sorrow. ”

“ I love them all, but O 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. ”

“ Through the green silence of the branching limes,
Whose linked flowers hanging from the still tree-top
Distil their soundless syrup drop by drop,
While 'twixt the starry bracket of their lips
The black bee drowsing floats and drowsing sips.
The flimsy leaves hang on the bright blue air
Calm-suspended. Deep peace is everywhere
Filled with the murmurous rumour of high noon.
Earth seems with open eyes to sink and swoon.
In the sky peace: where nothing moves
Save the sun that smiles and loves. ”

“ On thy lonely journey farest,
That understandest not nor carest
For me and my sadness!
Woe indeed! thou dost not know
Man cometh into this world in sorrow
To spend in grief to-night, to-morrow
In sorrow the third day to go! ”

“ Is loud with their clamour and leaps with their light.
The imperative chorus rises sonorous and fell:
My heart glows lighted as by fires of hell.
Sharply I pass the terse orders down.
The guns blare and rock. The hissing rain is blown
Athwart the hurtled shell that shrilling, shrilling goes
Away into the dark, to burst a cloud of rose
Over German trenches.
A pause: I stand and see
Lifting into the night like founts incessantly
The pistol-lights' pale spores upon the glimmering air.... ”

“ The soft wind lifts the rain-mist, flurries it, and spends
Its grief in mournful sighs, drifting from field to field,
Soaking the draggled sprays which the low hedges wield
As they labour in the wet and the load of the wind.
The last light is dimming; night comes on behind. ”

“ On their black woolly heads gold platters they carried,
Piled high with rich fruits; betwixt jewelled hands,
Goblets of crystal, white blossoming wands,
Urns breathing incense: all these to be set
Where Truth's feast and the feasters too soon shall be met.
The guest shall turn as he laughs and sups,
Reaching his hand for the golden wine;
His face shall change as he sees next to him
A mouth that mocks, eyes that look through him,
A head sink her glistening brow 'twixt the cups,
Locks blackening his stoup with a liquor of brine. ”

“ Thus, thus to suffer world-without-end,
No love, no hope, no goal, no friend!
And the proud, morning Centaur, how
Fares he? what lot doth Fate allow?—
More wretched yet! to live and be
Perfection's lone epitome. ”

“ She goes searching for the forgotten dead
Hidden in the hedges or trodden into muck
Under the trenches, or maybe limply stuck
Somewhere in the branches of a high lonely tree—
He was a sniper once. They never found his body.
I see the mist drifting. I hear the wind and rain,
And on my clammy face the oozed breath of the slain
Seems to be blowing. Almost I have heard
In the shuddering drift the lost dead's last word:
Go home, go home, go to my house ”

“ Under the shadow of its hood,
A glimmering shape that does not move.
It is the shepherd and his love:
Close, close they stand, swooning and dim;
Her shadowed face looks up at him,
Her sighing breath his forehead warms;
He sings, she leans within his arms.
THE SHEPHERD'S NIGHT SONG.
The Shepherd. ”

“ Through the dark wood from the spring's fountain-head
Flock upon flock of eyed narcissi shook,
And the brook wept in sorrow for the dead.
Ah, Death again! nothing can fend
Us from the Sibyl of the End,
Whose delight 'tis to find new forms,
Now in dull sighs, anon in storms,
Singing, and ever of the same:
The trusting heart betrayed; the flame
[Pg 129] Whirled in a night on cities proud;
Lightnings from skies undimmed by cloud;
The wide grave yawned before swift feet;
The small success that brings defeat ”

“ And tremulous confidence.
Arms to have and to use them
And a soul to be made
Worthy if not worthy;
If afraid, unafraid.
To endure for a little,
To endure and have done:
Men I love about me,
Over me the sun! ”

“ Strength, Beauty and the Golden Earth!
V
Of Downs beloved by Pan.
Beyond the rocks, below the trees,
The great downs lie; nought but the breeze
Is heard upon them. All day long
The shadows of the great clouds throng
Across their sides: a noiseless rout. ”

“ Might share that bitter load in grief, in pride!...
I see upon bronze faces love, submission,
And a dumb sorrow for that cheerful Boy.
[Pg 47]
Now they arrive. The priest repeats the service.
The drifting rain obscures.
They are dispersed.
The dying sun streams out: a moment's radiance;
The still, wet, glistening grave; the trod sward steaming.
Sudden great guns startle, echoing on the silence.
Thunder. Thunder.
He has Fallen in battle.
(O Boy! Boy!)
Lessening now. The rain
Patters anew. Far guns rumble and shudder
And night descends upon the desolate plain. ”

“ They can float flat and dream on the soft air....
The trees are asleep, beautiful, slumbrous trees!
Stirred only by the passion of the breeze,
That, like a warm wave welling over rocks,
Loosens and lifts the mass of drowsing locks.
Earth, too, under the profound grass
Sleeps and sleeps, and softly heaves her slumbrous mass. ”

“ That drank its age's fuel in an hour:
For whom the whole world burning had not power
To quick with life the smouldered wick again!
[Pg 6]
III.—THE RECKONING
The whole world burns, and with it burns my flesh.
Arise, thou spirit spent by sterile tears;
Thine eyes were ardent once, thy looks were fresh,
Thy brow shone bright amid thy shining peers.
Fame calls thee not, thou who hast vainly strayed
So far for her; nor Passion, who in the past
Gave thee her ghost to wed and to be paid;
Nor Love, whose anguish only learned to last. ”

“ 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!
[Pg 147] For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, the blessed and doomed,
Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed;
And spreading his hands in blessing, 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 hedgëd about with spears ”

“ Slumbers a rapt, deep lake, so blue, so sad,
That no fish swim it, nor about it call
"Delighting birds from green-bowered shore to shore,
Nor doth the nightingale, when June begins
And the moon mounts a pattin of bright or,
Hymn her long sorrows and her lord's black sins.
"And the boy answered, answered me, and mourned
The loveliness of Echo. 'Yet,' sighed he,
'My soul is fled, and long, thou knowest, bourned
In what far dell none knoweth, love, but thee
"'Who farest thither! ”

“ Who scarce can lift his panged and heavy head,
Who drinks in grief the hot light of the sun,
Whose eyes watch dully the green branches spread,
Who feels his currents ever slowlier run,
Whose lips repeat a silent '... Dead! ”

“ Or alway bide beyond the long wave's reach.
[Pg 59]
O Will, thou only strengthener of man's heart
When all is gone—love and the love of friends,
When even Earth's comfort has become a part
Of that futility nor breaks nor mends:
Strengthen me now against these utmost wrongs ”

“ September, 1916.
[Pg 48]
II.—BOY
In a far field, away from England, lies
A Boy I friended with a care like love;
All day the wide earth aches, the cold wind cries,
The melancholy clouds drive on above. ”

“ Broad bands of silver, they glitter and quake,
Moving out into the night.
Off from the shore they slide,
Out, out into the blue:
And I am turned to a shimmering tide
Flooding on outward to you!
Hengistbury Head,
Spring, 1915.
[Pg 181]
TRANSFIGURATION
Two feet apart, straight-limbed on the heathered hill
We lie, under the wavering haze
Of the sun, even as two logs that lie still
In the heart of a blaze.
Side by side we lie through the long
Late noon together;
On us the light wind stoops his strong,
Hot, sweet scents of heather. ”

“ Prepares your bowl of blood, your fleshy feast:
Where in the thronged and long-hushed marketplace
Ten thousand faces gaze on one pale face;
Where the lost victim feels the lonely ban
Of death terrific loosed by man on man ”

“ This remarkable book, establishing English poetry as a thing governed from within by its own necessities, and not by rules of æsthetics imposed on it from without, formulates principles which, unperceived, have governed English poetry from the earliest times, which find their greatest exemplar in Shakespeare, and which, though beginning to be realized by the less pedantic of the moderns, are in its pages for the first time lucidly expounded and—such is their adequacy—can, in the end, only be regarded as indubitably proven.—R. M. B. N., 1917. ”