The Complete Poems

by Robert Graves

  Striding forward into the wilderness

  With eager thighs, forgetful of their oath,

  Adventurous for this monster, a new man,

  Their own kin – how accursed? – they haste for wonder.

  RAISING THE STONE

  A shaft of moon from the cloud-hurried sky

  Has coursed the wide dark heath, but nowhere found

  One paler patch to illumine – oats nor rye,

  Chalk-pit nor waterpool nor sandy ground –

  Till, checked by our thronged faces on the mound

  (A wedge of whiteness) universally

  Strained backward from the task that holds us bound,

  It beams on set jaw and hate-maddened eye.

  The vast stone lifts, turns, topples, in its fall

  Spreads death: but we who live raise a shrill chant

  Of joy for sacrifice cleansing us all.

  Once more we heave. Erect in earth we plant

  The interpreter of our dumb furious call,

  Outraging Heaven, pointing

  ‘I want, I want.’

  THE GNAT

  The shepherd Watkin heard an inner voice

  Calling ‘My creature, ho! be warned, be ready!’

  Calling, ‘The moment comes, therefore be ready!’

  And a third time calling, ‘Creature, be ready!’

  This old poor man mistook the call, which sounded

  Not for himself, but for his pensioner.

  Now (truth or phantasy) the shepherd nourished

  Fast in his brain, due earnings of transgression,

  A creature like to that avenging fly

  Once crept unseen in at the ear of Titus,

  Tunnelling gradually inwards, upwards,

  Heading for flowery pastures of the brain,

  And battened on such grand, presumptuous fare

  As grew him brazen claws and brazen hair

  And wings of iron mail. Old Watkin felt

  A like intruder channelling to and fro.

  He cursed his day and sin done in past years,

  Repentance choked, pride that outlawed his heart,

  So that at night often in thunderous weather

  Racked with the pain he’d start

  From sleep, incontinently howling, leaping,

  Striking his hoar head on the cottage walls,

  Stamping his feet, dragging his hair by the roots.

  He’d rouse the Gnat to anger, send it buzzing

  Like a huge mill, scraping with metal claws

  At his midpoint of being; forthwith tumble

  With a great cry for Death to stoop and end him.

  Now Watkin hears the voice and weeps for bliss,

  The voice that warned ‘Creature, the time is come.’

  Merciful Death, was it Death, all his desire?

  Promised of Heaven, and speedy? O Death, come!

  Only for one thought must he make provision,

  For honest Prinny, for old bob-tail Prinny.

  Another master? Where? These hillside crofters

  Were spiteful to their beasts and mercenary.

  Prinny to such? No, Prinny too must die.

  By his own hand, then? Murder! By what other?

  No human hand should touch the sacrifice,

  No human hand;

  God’s hand then, through his temporal minister.

  Three times has Watkin in the morning early

  When not a soul was rising, left his flock,

  Come to the Minister’s house through the cold mist,

  Clicked at the latch and slowly moved the gate,

  Faltered, held back and dared not enter in.

  ‘Not this time, Prinny, we’ll not rouse them yet,

  To-morrow, surely, for our death is tokened,

  My death and your death with small interval.

  We meet in fields beyond; be sure of it, Prinny!’

  On the next night

  The busy Gnat, swollen to giant size,

  Pent-up within the skull, knew certainly,

  As a bird knows in the egg, his hour was come…

  The thrice-repeated call had given him summons…

  He must out, crack the shell, out, out!

  He strains, claps his wings, arches his back,

  Drives in his talons, out! out!

  In the white anguish of this travail, Watkin

  Hurls off his blankets, tears an axe from the nail,

  Batters the bed, hews table, splits the floor,

  Hears Prinny whine at his feet, leaps, strikes again,

  Strikes, yammering.

  At that instant with a clatter,

  Noise of a bursting dam, a toppling wall,

  Out flies the new-born creature from his mouth

  And humming fearsomely like a huge engine,

  Rackets about the room, smites the unseen

  Glass of half-open windows, reels, recovers,

  Soars out into the meadows, and is gone.

  Silence prolonged to an age. Watkin still lives?

  The hour of travail by the voice foretold

  Brought no last throbbings of the dying Body

  In child-birth of the Soul. Watkin still lives.

  Labourer Watkin delves in the wet fields.

  Did an old shepherd die that night with Prinny,

  Die weeping with his head on the outraged corpse?

  Oh, he’s forgotten. A dead dream, a cloud.

  Labourer Watkin delves drowsily, numbly,

  His harsh spade grates among the buried stones.

  THE PATCHWORK BONNET

  Across the room my silent love I throw,

  Where you sit sewing in bed by candlelight,

  Your young stern profile and industrious fingers

  Displayed against the blind in a shadow show,

  To Dinda’s grave delight.

  The needle dips and pokes, the cheerful thread

  Runs after, follow-my-leader down the seam:

  The patchwork pieces cry for joy together,

  O soon to sit as a crown on Dinda’s head,

  Fulfilment of their dream.

  Snippets and odd ends folded by, forgotten,

  With camphor on the top shelf, hard to find,

  Now wake to this most happy resurrection,

  To Dinda playing toss with a reel of cotton

  And staring at the blind.

  Dinda in sing-song stretching out one hand

  Calls for the playthings; mother does not hear:

  Her mind sails far away on a patchwork Ocean,

  And all the world must wait till she touches land,

  So Dinda cries in fear,

  Then Mother turns, laughing like a young fairy,

  And Dinda smiles to see her look so kind,

  Calls out again for playthings, playthings, playthings,

  And now the shadows make an Umbrian ‘Mary

  Adoring’, on the blind.

  KIT LOGAN AND LADY HELEN

  Here is Kit Logan with her love-child come

  To Lady Helen’s gate:

  Then down sweeps Helen from the Italian room,

  She, with her child of hate.

  Kit’s boy was born of violent hot desire,

  Helen’s of hate and dread:

  Poor girl, betrayed to union with the Squire,

  Loathing her marriage bed.

  Kit Logan, who is father to your boy?

  But Helen knows, too well:

  Listen what biting taunts they both employ,

  Watch their red anger swell.

  Yet each would give her undying soul to be

  Changed to the other’s place.

  Kit from the wet road’s tasking cruelty

  Looks up to silk and lace,

  Helen looks down at rags, her fluttering pride

  Caught in this cage of glass,

  Eager to trudge, thieve, beg by the road-side,

  Or starving to eat grass…

  Silence. Wrath dies. For Woman�
�s old good name

  Each swears a sister’s oath;

  Weeping, they kiss; to the Squire’s lasting shame,

  Who broke the heart in both.

  DOWN

  Downstairs a clock had chimed, two o’clock only.

  Then outside from the hen-roost crowing came.

  Why should the shift-wing call against the clock,

  Three hours from dawn? Now shutters click and knock,

  And he remembers a sad superstition

  Unfitting for the sick-bed….Turn aside,

  Distract, divide, ponder the simple tales

  That puzzled childhood; riddles, turn them over –

  Half-riddles, answerless, the more intense.

  Lost bars of music tinkling with no sense

  Recur, drowning uneasy superstition.

  Mouth open he was lying, this sick man,

  And sinking all the while; how had he come

  To sink? On better nights his dream went flying,

  Dipping, sailing the pasture of his sleep,

  But now (since clock and cock) had sunk him down

  Through mattress, bed, floor, floors beneath, stairs, cellars,

  Through deep foundations of the manse; still sinking

  Through unturned earth. How had he magicked space

  With inadvertent motion or word uttered

  Of too-close-packed intelligence (such there are),

  That he should penetrate with sliding ease

  Dense earth, compound of ages, granite ribs

  And groins? Consider: there was some word uttered,

  Some abracadabra – then, like a stage-ghost,

  Funereally with weeping, down, drowned, lost!

  Oh, to be a child once more, sprawling at ease

  On smooth turf of a ruined castle court!

  Once he had dropped a stone between the slabs

  That masked an ancient well, mysteriously

  Plunging his mind down with it. Hear it go

  Rattling and rocketing into secret void!

  Count slowly: one, two, three! and echoes come

  Fainter and fainter, merged in the general hum

  Of bees and flies; only a thin draught rises

  To chill the drowsy air. There he had lain

  As if unborn, until life floated back

  From the deep waters.

  Oh, to renew now

  That bliss of repossession, kindly sun

  Forfeit for ever, and the towering sky!

  Falling, falling! Day closed up behind him.

  Now stunned by the violent subterrene flow

  Of rivers, whirling down to hiss below

  On the flame-axis of this terrible earth;

  Toppling upon their waterfall, O spirit….

  SAUL OF TARSUS

  ‘Share and share alike

  In the nest’ was the rule,

  But Paul had a wide throat,

  He loved his belly-full.

  Over the edge went Peter,

  After him went John,

  True-blooded young nestlings

  Thrown out, one by one.

  If Mother Church was proud

  Of her great cuckoo son,

  He bit off her simple head

  Before he had done.

  STORM: AT THE FARM WINDOW

  The unruly member (for relief

  Of aching head) clacks without care;

  Pastures lie sullen; hung with grief

  The steading: thunder binds the air.

  Gulls on the blue sea-surface rock:

  The cows move lowing to scant shade;

  Jess lays aside the half-worked smock,

  Dan, in his ditch, lets fall the spade.

  Now swoops the outrageous hurricane

  With lightning in steep pitchfork jags;

  The blanched hill leaps in sheeted rain,

  Sea masses white to assault the crags.

  Such menace tottering overhead,

  Old Jess for ague scolds no more;

  She sees grey bobtail flung down dead

  Lightning-blazed by the barn door –

  Wonder and panic chase our grief,

  Purge our thick distempered blood;

  Man, cattle, harvest shock and sheaf,

  Stagger below the sluicing flood….

  BLACK HORSE LANE

  Dame Jane the music mistress,

  the music mistress;

  Sharkie the baker of Black Horse Lane,

  At sound of a fiddle

  Caught her up by the middle –

  And away like swallows from the lane,

  Flying out together –

  From the crooked lane.

  What words said Sharkie to her,

  said Sharkie to her?

  How did she look in the lane?

  No neighbour heard

  One sigh or one word,

  Not a sound but the fiddling in Black Horse Lane,

  The happy noise of music –

  Again and again.

  Where now be those two old ’uns,

  be those two old ’uns?

  Sharkie the baker run off with Jane?

  Hark ye up to Flint Street,

  Halloo to Pepper-Mint Street,

  Follow by the fells to the great North Plain,

  By the fells and the river –

  To the cold North Plain.

  How came this passion to them,

  this passion to them,

  Love in a freshet on Black Horse Lane?

  It came without warning

  One blue windy morning

  So they scarcely might know was it joy or pain,

  With scarce breath to wonder –

  Was it joy or pain.

  Took they no fardels with them,

  no fardels with them,

  Out and alone on the ice-bound plain?

  Sharkie he had rockets

  And crackers in his pockets,

  Aye, and she had a plaid shawl to keep off the rain,

  An old Highland plaid shawl –

  To keep off the rain.

  RETURN

  The seven years’ curse is ended now

  That drove me forth from this kind land,

  From mulberry-bough and apple-bough

  And gummy twigs the west wind shakes,

  To drink the brine from crusted lakes

  And grit my teeth on sand.

  Now for your cold, malicious brain

  And most uncharitable, cold heart,

  You, too, shall clank the seven years’ chain

  On sterile ground for all time cursed

  With famine’s itch and flames of thirst,

  The blank sky’s counterpart.

  The load that from my shoulder slips

  Straightway upon your own is tied:

  You, too, shall scorch your finger-tips

  With scrabbling on the desert’s face

  Such thoughts I had of this green place,

  Sent scapegoat for your pride.

  Here, Robin on a tussock sits,

  And Cuckoo with his call of hope

  Cuckoos awhile, then off he flits,

  While peals of dingle-dongle keep

  Troop-discipline among the sheep

  That graze across the slope.

  A brook from fields of gentle sun

  Through the glade its water heaves,

  The falling cone would well-nigh stun

  That Squirrel wantonly lets drop

  When up he scampers to tree-top

  And dives among the green.

  But no, I ask a surer peace

  Than vengeance on you could provide.

  So fear no ill from my release:

  Be off, elude the curse, disgrace

  Some other green and happy place –

  This world of fools is wide.

  INCUBUS

  Asleep, amazed, with lolling head,

  Arms in supplication spread,

  Body shudders, dumb with fear;

  There lif
ts the Moon, but who am I,

  Cloaked in shadow wavering by,

  Stooping, muttering at his ear?

  Bound is Body, foot and hand,

  Bound to lie at my command,

  Horror bolted to lie still

  While I sap what sense I will.

  Through the darkness here come I,

  Softly fold about the prey;

  Body moaning must obey,

  Must not question who or why,

  Must accept me, come what may,

  Dumbly must obey.

  When owls and cocks dispute the dawn,

  Through the window I am drawn

  Streaming out, a foggy breath.

  …Body waking with a sigh

  From the spell that was half Death,

  Smiles for freedom, blinks an eye

  At the sun-commanded sky,

  ‘O morning scent and tree-top song,

  Slow-rising smoke and nothing wrong!’

  THE HILLS OF MAY

  Walking with a virgin heart

  The green hills of May,

  Me, the Wind, she took as lover

  By her side to play,

  Let me toss her untied hair,

  Let me shake her gown,

  Careless though the daisies redden,

  Though the sun frown,

  Scorning in her gay habit

  Lesser love than this,

  My cool spiritual embracing,

  My secret kiss.

  So she walked, the proud lady,

  So danced or ran,

  So she loved with a whole heart,

  Neglecting man….

  Fade, fail, innocent stars

  On the green of May:

  She has left our bournes for ever,

  Too fine to stay.

  THE CORONATION MURDER

  Old Becker crawling in the night

  From his grave at the stair-foot,

  Labours up the long flight,

  Feeble, dribbling, black as soot,

  Quakes at his own ghostly fright.

  A cat goes past with lantern eyes,

  Shooting splendour through the dark.

  ‘Murder! Help!’ a voice cries

  In nightmare; the son dreams that stark

  In lead his vanished father lies.

  A stair-top glimmer points the goal.

  Becker goes wavering up, tongue-tied,

  Stoops, with eye to keyhole….

  There, a tall candle by her side,

  Delilah sits, serene and whole.

  Her fingers turn the prayer-book leaves

  And, free from spiritual strife,

  Soft and calm her breast heaves:

  Thus calmly with his cobbling knife

  She stabbed him through; now never grieves.