Robert Nichols

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Forward to Harold Monro

'To _____'

Asleep within the deadest hour of night

And turning with the earth, I was aware

How suddenly the eastern curve was bright,

As when the sun arises from his lair.

But not the sun arose: It was thy hair

Shaken up heaven in tossing leagues of light.

Since then I know that neither night nor day

May I escape thee, O my heavenly hell!

Awake, in dreams, thou springest to waylay;

And should I dare to die, I know full well

Whose voice would mock me in the mourning bell,

Whose face would greet me in hell's fiery way.

The Assault

The beating of the guns grows louder.

' Not long, boys, now. '

My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder.

Hurricanes grow

As guns redouble their fire.

Through the shaken periscope peeping,

I glimpse their wire:

Black earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping,

Spouting like shocks of meeting waves,

Death's fountains are playing,

Shells like shrieking birds rush over;

Crash and din rises higher.

A stream of lead raves

Over us from the left . . . (we safe under cover!)

Crash! Reverberation! Crash!

Acrid smoke billowing. Flash upon flash.

Black smoke drifting. The German line

Vanishes in confusion, smoke. Cries, and cry

Of our men, ' Gah, yer swine!

Ye're for it, '  die

In a hurricane of shell.

One cry:

' We're comin' soon! look out! '

There is opened hell

Over there; fragments fly,

Rifles and bits of men whirled at the sky:

Dust, smoke, thunder! A sudden bout

Of machine guns chattering . . .

And redoubled battering,

As if in fury at their daring! . . .

No good staring.

Time soon now . . . home . . . house on a sunny hill . . .

Gone like a flickered page:

Time soon now . . . zero . . . will engage . . . .

A sudden thrill --

' Fix bayonets! '

Gods! we have our fill

Of fear, hysteria, exultation, rage,

Rage to kill.

My heart burns hot, whiter and whiter,

Contracts tighter and tighter,

Until I stifle with the will

Long forged, now used

(Though utterly strained) --

O pounding heart,

Baffled, confused,

Heart panged, head singing, dizzily pained --

To do my part.

Blindness a moment. Sick.

There the men are!

Bayonets ready: click!

Time goes quick;

A stumbled prayer . . . somehow a blazing star

In a blue night . . . where?

Again prayer.

The tongue trips. Start:

How's time? Soon now. Two minutes or less.

The gun's fury mounting higher . . .

Their utmost. I lift a silent hand. Unseen I bless

Those hearts will follow me.

And beautifully,

Now beautifully my will grips,

Soul calm and round and filmed and white!

A shout: ' Men, no such order as retire! '

I nod.

The whistle's 'twixt my lips . . .

I catch

A wan, worn smile at me.

Dear men!

The pale wrist-watch . . .

The quiet hand ticks on amid the din.

The guns again

Rise to a last fury, to a rage, a lust:

Kill! Pound! Kill! Pound! Pound!

Now comes the thrust!

My part . . . dizziness . . . will . . . but trust

These men. The great guns rise;

Their fury seems to burst the earth and skies!

They lift.

Gather, heart, all thoughts that drift;

Be steel, soul,

Compress thyself

Into a round, bright whole.

I cannot speak.

Time. Time!

I hear my whistle shriek,

Between teeth set;

I fling an arm up,

Scramble up the grime

Over the parapet!

I'm up. Go on.

Something meets us.

Head down into the storm that greets us.

A wail.

Lights. Blurr.

Gone.

On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail.

Spatter. Whirr! Whirr!

' Toward that patch of brown;

Direction left. '  Bullets a stream.

Devouring thought crying in a dream.

Men, crumpled, going down . . . .

Go on. Go.

Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado.

Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating.

My voice's strangled shout:

' Steady pace, boys! '

The still light: gladness.

' Look, sir. Look out! '

Ha! Ha! bunched figures waiting.

Revolver levelled quick!

Flick! Flick!

Red as blood.

Germans. Germans.

Good! O good!

Cool madness.

Fulfilment

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.

Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.

Other loves I have, men rough, but men who stir

More grief, more joy, than love of thee and thine.

Faces cheerful, full of whimsical mirth,

Lined by the wind, burned by the sun;

Bodies enraptured by the abounding earth,

As whose children we are brethren: one.

And any moment may descend hot death

To shatter limbs! pulp, tear, blast

Beloved soldiers who love rough life and breath

Not less for dying faithful to the last.

O the fading eyes, the grimed face turned bony,

Oped mouth gushing, fallen head,

Lessening pressure of a hand shrunk, clammed, and stony!

O sudden spasm, release of the dead!

Was there love once? I have forgotten her.

Was there grief once? grief yet is mine.

O loved, living, dying, heroic soldier,

All, all, my joy, my grief, my love, are thine!

The Philosopher's Oration

(From ' A Faun's Holiday ')

Meanwhile, though nations in distress

Cower at a comet's loveliness

Shaken across the midnight sky;

Though the wind roars, and Victory,

A virgin fierce, on vans of gold

Stoops through the cloud's white smother rolled

Over the armies' shock and flow

Across the broad green hills below,

Yet hovers and will not circle down

To cast t'ward one the leafy crown;

Though men drive galleys' golden beaks

To isles beyond the sunset peaks,

And cities on the sea behold

Whose walls are glass, whose gates are gold,

Whose turrets, risen in an hour,

Dazzle between the sun and shower,

Whose sole inhabitants are kings

Six cubits high with gryphon's wings

And beard and mien more glorious

Than Midas or Assaracus;

Though priests in many a a hill-top fane

Lift anguished hands -- and lift in vain --

Toward the sun's shaft dancing through

The bright roof's square of wind-swept blue;

Though 'cross the stars nightly arise

The silver fumes of sacrifice;

Though a new Helen bring new scars

Pyres piled upon wrecked golden cars,

Stacked spears, rolled smoke, and spirits sped

Like a streaked flame toward the dead:

Though all these be, yet grows not old

Delight of sunned and windy wold,

Of soaking downs aglare, asteam,

Of still tarns where the yellow gleam

Of a far sunrise slowly breaks,

Or sunset strews with golden flakes

The deeps which soon the stars will throng.

For earth yet keeps her undersong

Of comfort and of ultimate peace,

That whoso seeks shall never cease

To hear at dawn or noon or night.

Joys hath she, too, joys thin and bright,

Too thin, too bright, for those to hear

Who listen with an eager ear,

Or course about and seek to spy,

Within an hour, eternity.

First must the spirit cast aside

This world's and next his own poor pride

And learn the universe to scan

More as a flower, less as a man.

Then shall he hear the lonely dead

Sing and the stars sing overhead,

And every spray upon the heath,

And larks above and ants beneath;

The stream shall take him in her arms;

Blue skies shall rest him in their calms;

The wind shall be a lovely friend,

And every leaf and bough shall bend

Over him with a lover's grace.

The hills shall bare a perfect face

Full of a high solemnity;

The heavenly clouds shall weep, and be

Content as overhead they swim

To be high brothers unto him.

No more shall he feel pitched and hurled

Uncomprehended into this world;

For every place shall be his place,

And he shall recognize its face.

At dawn he shall upon his path;

No sword shall touch him, nor the wrath

Of the ranked crowd of clamorous men.

At even he shall home again,

And lay him down to sleep at ease,

One with the Night and the Night's peace.

Ev'n Sorrow, to be escaped of none,

But a more deep communion

Shall be to him, and Death at last

No more dreaded than the Past,

Whose shadow in the brain of earth

Informs him now and gave him birth.

The Naiads' Music

(From ' A Faun's Holiday ')

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:

For our kisses lightlier run

Than the traceries of the sun

By the lolling water cast

Up grey precipices vast,

Lifting smooth and waem and steep

Out of the palely shimmering deep.

Come, ye sorrowul, and take

Kisses that are but half awake:

For here are eyes O softer far

Than the blossom of the star

Upon the mothy twilit waters,

And here are mouths whose gentle laughters

Are but the echoes of the deep

Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, and see

The raindrops flaming goldenly

On the stream's eddies overhead

And dragonflies with drops of red

In the crisp surface of each wing

Threading slant rains that flash and sing,

Or under the water-lily's cup,

From darkling depths, roll slowly up

The bronze flanks of ancient bream

Into the hot sun's shattered beam,

Or over a sunk tree's bubbled bole

The perch stream in a golden shoal:

Come, ye sorrowful; our deep

Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.

But if ye sons of Sorrow come

Only wishing to be numb:

Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,

Our breasts are soft as silken roses,

And our hands are tenderer

Than he breaths that scarce can stir

The sunlit eglantine that is

Murmurous with hidden bees.

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.

Come, ye sorrowful, for here

No voices sound but fond and clear

Of mouths as lorn as is the rose

That under water doth disclose,

Amid her crimson petals torn,

A heart as golden as the morn;

And here are tresses langourous

As the weeds wander over us,

And brows as holy and as bland

As the honey-coloured sand

Lying sun-entranced below

The lazy water's limpid flow:

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep

Your tired brows in a nectorous sleep.

The Prophetic Bard's Oration

(From ' A Faun's Holiday ')

' Be warned! I feel the world grow old,

And off Olympus fades the gold

Of the simple passionate sun;

And the Gods wither one by one;

Proud-eyed Apollo's bow is broken,

And throned Zeus nods nor may be woken

But by the song of spirits seven

Quiring in the midnight heaven

Of a new world no more forlorn,

Sith unto it a Babe is born,

That in a propped, thatched stable lies,

While with darkling, reverent eyes

Dusky Emperors, coifed in gold,

Kneel mid the rushy mire, and hold

Caskets of rubies, urns of myrrh,

Whose fumes enwrap the thurifer

And coil toward the high dim rafters

Where, with lutes and warbling laughters,

Clustered cherubs of rainbow feather,

Fanning the fragrant air together,

Flit in jubilant holy glee,

And make heavenly minstrelsy

To the Child their Sun, whose flow

Bathes them His cloudlets from below . . . .

Long shall this chimed accord be heard,

Yet all earth hushed to His first word:

Then shall be seen Apollo's car

Blaze headlong like a banished star;

And the Queen of heavenly Loves

Dragged downward by her dying doves;

Vulcan, spun on a wheel, shall track

The circle of the zodiac;

Silver Artemis be lost,

To the polar blizzards tossed;

Heaven shall curdle as with blood;

The sun be swallowed in the flood;

The universe be silent save

For the low drone of winds that lave

The shadowed great world's ashen sides

As through the rustling void she glides.

Then shall there be a whisper heard

Of the Grave's Secret and its Word,

Where in black silence none shall cry

Save those who, dead-affrighted, spy

How from the murmurous graveyeards creep

The figures of eternal sleep.

Last: when 'tis light men shall behold,

Beyond the crags, a flower of gold

Blossoming in a golden haze,

And, while they guess Zeus' halls now blaze,

Shall in the blossom's heart descry

The saints of a new hierarchy! '

He ceased . . . and in the morning sky

Zeus' anger threatened murmurously.

I sped away. The lightning's sword

Stabbed on the forest. But the word

Abides with me. I feel its power

Most darkly in the twilit hour,

When Night's eternal shadow, cast

Over earth hushed and pale and vast,

Darkly foretells the soundless Night

In which this orb, so green, so bright,

Now spins, and which shall compass her

When on her rondure nought shall stir

But snow-whorls which the wind shall roll

From the Equator to the Pole . . . .

For everlastingly there is

Something Beyond, Behind: I wis

All Gods are haunted, and there clings,

As hounds behind fled sheep, the things

Beyond the Universe's ken:

Gods haunt the Half-Gods, Half-Gods men,

And Man the brute. Gods, born of Night

Feel a blacker appetite

Gape to devour them; Half-Gods dread

But jealous Gods; and mere men tread

Warily lest a Half-God rise

And loose on them from empty skies

Amazement, thunder, stark affright,

Famine and sudden War's thick night,

In which loud Furies hunt the Pities

Through smoke above wrecked, flaming cities.

For Pan, the Unknown God, rules all.

He shall outlive the funeral,

Change, and decay, of many Gods,

Until he, too, lets fall his rods

Of viewless power upon that minute

When Universe cowers at Infinite!

The Tower

It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs

The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.

The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,

Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;

In the closed, scented gardens the rose loosed from the stem

Her white showery petals; none regarded them;

The starry thicket breathed odours to the sentinel palm;

Silence possessed the city like a soul possessed by calm.

Not a spark in the warren under the giant night,

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!

For, set in that tiny chamber, Jesus, blessed and doomed,

Spoke to the lone apostles as light to men entombed;

And spreading his hands in blesing, 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 hedgéd about with spears;

And in his face the sickness of departure had spread a gloom,

At leaving his young friends friendless.

       They could not forget the tomb.

He smiled subduedly, telling, in tones soft as the voice of the dove,

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,

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.

But Judas wound down the turret, creeping from floor to floor,

And would fly; but one leaning, weeping, barred him beside the door.

And he knew her by her ruddy garment and two yet-watching men:

Mary of Seven Evils, Mary Magdalen.

And he was frighted at her. She sighed: ' I dreamed him dead.

We sell the body for silver. . . . '

       Then Judas cried out and fled

Forth into the night! . . . The moon had begun to set:

A drear, deft wind went sifting, setting the dust afret;

Into the heart of the city Judas ran on and prayed

To stern Jehovah lest his deed make him afraid.

Thus Jesus discoursed, and was silent, sitting upright, and soon

Past the casement behind him slanted the sinking moon;

And, rising for Olivet, all stared, between love and dread,

Seeing the torrid moon a ruddy halo behind his head.

Back to I. Rosenberg
Forward to Harold Monro