Country Sentiment | Page 3

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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 man.
AFTER THE PLAY.
Father
Have you spent the money I gave you to-day?
John
Ay, father I have.?A fourpence on cakes, two pennies that away?To a beggar I gave.
Father
The lake of yellow brimstone boil for you in Hell,?Such lies that you spin.?Tell the truth now, John, ere the falsehood swell,?Say, where have you been?
John
I'll lie no more to you, father, what is the need??To the Play I went,?With sixpence for a near seat, money's worth indeed,?The best ever spent.
Grief to you, shame or grief, here is the story--?My splendid night!?It was colour, scents, music, a tragic glory,?Fear with delight.
Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, title of the tale:?He of that name,?A