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ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
COUNTRY SENTIMENT
by
Robert Graves
To Nancy Nicholson
Note
Some of the poems included in this volume have appeared in
"The
New Statesman", "The Owl", "Reveille", "Land and Water", "Poetry",
and other papers, English and American.
Robert Graves.
Harlech,
North Wales.
CONTENTS
A Frosty Night
Song for Two Children
Dicky
The Three Drinkers

The Boy out of Church
After the Play
One Hard Look
True
Johnny
The Voice of Beauty Drowned
The God Called Poetry

Rocky Acres
Advice to Lovers
Nebuchadnezzar's Fall
Give us
Rain
Allie
Loving Henry
Brittle Bones
Apples and Water

Manticor in Arabia
Outlaws
Baloo Loo for Jenny
Hawk and
Buckle
The "Alice Jean"
The Cupboard
The Beacon
Pot and
Kettle
Ghost Raddled
Neglectful Edward
The Well-dressed
Children
Thunder at Night
To E.M.--A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme

Jane
Vain and Careless
Nine o'Clock
The Picture Book
The
Promised Lullaby

RETROSPECT
Haunted
Retrospect: The Jests of the Clock
Here They Lie
Tom
Taylor
Country at War
Sospan Fach
The Leveller
Hate not, Fear
not
A Rhyme of Friends
A First Review
A FROSTY NIGHT.
Mother
Alice, dear, what ails you,
Dazed and white and shaken?
Has the
chill night numbed you?
Is it fright you have taken?
Alice
Mother, I am very well,
I felt never better,
Mother, do not hold me
so,
Let me write my letter.
Mother
Sweet, my dear, what ails you?
Alice
No, but I am well;
The night was cold and frosty,
There's no more
to tell.
Mother
Ay, the night was frosty,
Coldly gaped the moon,
Yet the birds
seemed twittering
Through green boughs of June.
Soft and thick the snow lay,
Stars danced in the sky.
Not all the
lambs of May-day
Skip so bold and high.
Your feet were dancing, Alice,
Seemed to dance on air,
You looked
a ghost or angel
In the starlight there.

Your eyes were frosted starlight,
Your heart fire and snow.
Who
was it said, "I love you"?
Alice
Mother, let me go!
A SONG FOR TWO CHILDREN.
"Make a song, father, a new little song,
All for Jenny and Nancy."
Balow lalow or Hey derry down,
Or else
what might you fancy?
Is there any song sweet enough
For Nancy and for Jenny?
Said
Simple Simon to the pieman,
"Indeed I know not any."
"I've counted the miles to Babylon,
I've flown the earth like a bird,
I've ridden cock-horse to Banbury
Cross,
But no such song have I heard."
"Some speak of Alexander,
And some of Hercules,
But where are there any like Nancy and Jenny,

Where are there any like these?"
DICKY.
Mother
Oh, what a heavy sigh!
Dicky, are you ailing?
Dicky
Even by this fireside, mother,
My heart is failing.
To-night across the down,
Whistling and jolly,
I sauntered out from

town
With my stick of holly.
Bounteous and cool from sea
The wind was blowing,
Cloud
shadows under the moon
Coming and going.
I sang old roaring songs,
Ran and leaped quick,
And turned home
by St. Swithin's
Twirling my stick.
And there as I was passing
The churchyard gate
An old man
stopped me, "Dicky,
You're walking late."
I did not know the man,
I grew afeared
At his lean lolling jaw,

His spreading beard.
His garments old and musty,
Of antique cut,
His body very lean and
bony,
His eyes tight shut.
Oh, even to tell it now
My courage ebbs...
His face was clay,
mother,
His beard, cobwebs.
In that long horrid pause
"Good-night," he said,
Entered and clicked
the gate,
"Each to his bed."
Mother
Do not sigh or fear, Dicky,
How is it right
To grudge the dead their
ghostly dark
And wan moonlight?
We have the glorious sun,
Lamp and fireside.
Grudge not the dead
their moonshine
When abroad they ride.
THE THREE DRINKERS.
Blacksmith Green had three strong sons,
With bread and beef did fill
'em,
Now John and Ned are perished and dead,
But plenty remains
of William.

John Green was a whiskey drinker,
The Land of Cakes supplied him,

Till at last his soul flew out by the hole
That the fierce drink
burned inside him.
Ned Green was a water drinker,
And, Lord, how Ned would fuddle!

He rotted away his mortal clay
Like an old boot thrown in a
puddle.
Will Green was a wise young drinker,
Shrank from whiskey or water,

But he made good cheer with headstrong beer,
And married an
alderman's daughter.
THE BOY OUT OF CHURCH.
As Jesus and his followers
Upon a Sabbath morn
Were walking by
a wheat field
They plucked the ears of corn.
They plucked it, they rubbed it,
They blew the husks away,
Which
grieved the pious pharisees
Upon the Sabbath day.
And Jesus said, "A riddle
Answer if you can,
Was man made for
the Sabbath
Or Sabbath made for man?"
I do not love the Sabbath,
The soapsuds and the starch,
The troops
of solemn people
Who to Salvation march.
I take my book, I take my stick
On the Sabbath day,
In woody
nooks and valleys
I hide myself away.
To ponder there in quiet
God's Universal Plan,
Resolved that
church and Sabbath
Were never made for