Robert Nichols

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The Sprig of Lime

He lay, and those who watched him were amazed

To see unheralded beneath the lids

Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain,

Start and at once run crookedly athwart

Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.

So desolate too the sigh next uttered

Thay had wept also, but his great lips moved,

And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime;

Bring me a sprig of lime.' Whereat she stole

With dumb sings forth to pluck the thing he craved.

So lay he till a lime-twig had been snapped

From some still branch that swept the outer grass

Far from the silver pillar of the bole

Which mounting past the house's crusted roof

Split into massy limbs, crossed boughs, a maze

Of close-compacted intercontorted staffs

Bowered in foliage wherethrough the sun

Shot sudden showers of light or crystal spars

Or wavered in a green and vitreous flood.

And all the while in faint and fainter tones

Scarce audible on deeepened evening's hush

He framed his curious and last request

For 'lime, a sprig of lime.' Her trembling had

Closed his loose fingers on the awkward stem

Covered above with gentle heart-shaped leaves

And under dangling, pale as honey-wax,

Square clusters of sweet-scented starry flowers.

She laid his bent arm back upon his breast,

Then watched above white knuckles clenched in prayer.

He never moved. Only at last his eyes

Opened, then brightened in such avid gaze

She feared the coma mastered him again . . .

But no; strange sobs rose chuckling in his throat,

A stranger ecstasy suffused the flesh

Of that just mask so sun-dried, gouged and old

Which few -- too few! -- has loved, too many feared.

'Father!' she cried; 'Father!' He did not hear.

She knelt and kneeling drank the scent of limes,

Blown round the slow blind by a vesperal gust,

Till the room swam. So the lime-incense blew

Into her life as once it had in his,

Though how and when and with what ageless charge

Of sorrow and deep joy how could she know?

Sweet lime that often at the height of noon

Diffusing dizzy fragrance from your boughs,

Tasselled with blossoms more innumerable

Than the black bees, the uproar of whose toil

Filled your greeen vaults, winning such metheglyn

As clouds their sappy cells, distil, as once

Ye used, your sunniest emanations

Toward the window where a woman kneels --

She who within that room in childish hours

Lay through the lasting murmur of blanch'd noon

Behind the sultry blind, now full now flat,

Drinking anew of every odorous breath,

Supremely happy in her ignorance

Of Time that hastens hourly and of Death

Who need not haste. Scatter your fumes, O lime,

Loose from each hispid star of citron bloom,

Tangled beneath the labyrinthine boughs,

Cloud on such stinging cloud of exhalations

As reek of youth, fierce life and summer's prime,

Though hardly now shall he in that dusk room

Savour your sweetness, since the very sprig,

Profuse of bloosom and of essences,

He smells not, who in a paltering hand

Clasps it laid close his peaked and gleaming face

Propped in the pillow. Breathe silent, lofty lime,

Your curfew secrets out in fervid scent

To the attendant shadows! Tinge the air

Of the midsummer night that now begins,

At an owl's oaring flights from dusk to dusk

And downward caper of the giddy bat

Hawking against the lustre of bare skies,

With something of th' unfathomable bliss

He, who lies dying there, knew once of old

In the serene trance of a summer night

When with th' abundance of his young bride's hair

Loosed on his breast he lay and dared not sleep,

Listening for the scarce motion of your boughs,

Which sighed with bliss as she with blissful sleep,

And drinking desperately each honied wave

Of perfume wafted past the ghostly blind

Knew first th' implacable and bitter sense

Of Time that hastes and Death who need not haste.

Shed your last sweetness, limes!

       But now no more.

She, fruit of that night's love, she heeds you not,

Who bent, compassionate, to the dim floor

Takes up the sprig of lime and presses it

In pain against the stumbling of her heart,

Knowing, untold, he cannot need it now.

Seventeen

For Anne.

All the loud winds were in the garden wood,

All shadows joyfuller than lissom hounds

Doubled in chasing, all excultant clouds

That ever flung fierce mist and eddying fire

Across heavens deeper that blue polar seas

Fled over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts,

Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green.

She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed

To hear her voice so shrill in that gay roar,

And suddenly her eylashes were dimmed,

Caught in tense tears of spiritual joy;

For there were daffodils which sprightly shook

Ten thousand ruffling heads throughout the wood,

And every flower of those delighting flowers

Laughed, nodding to her, till she clapped her hands

Crying 'O daffies, could you only speak!'

But there was more. A jay with skyblue shaft

Set in blunt wing, skimmed screaming on ahead.

She followed him. A murrey squirrel eyed

Her warily, cocked upon tall-plumed haunch,

Then, skipping the whirligig of last-year leaves,

Whisked himself out of sight and reappeared

Leering about the bole of a young beech;

And every time she thought to corner him

He scrambled round on little scratchy hands

To peek at her about the other side.

She lost him, bolting branch to branch, at last --

The impudent brat! But still high overhead

Flight on exuberant flight of opal scud,

Or of dissolving mist, florid as flame,

Scattered in ecstasy over the blue. And she

Followed, first walking, giving her bright locks

To the cold fervour of the springtime gale,

Whose rush bore the cloud shadow past the cloud

Over the irised wastes of emerald turf.

And still the huge wind volleyed. Save the gulls,

Goldenly in the sunny blast careering

Or on blue-shadowed underwing at plunge,

None shared with her who now could not but run

The splendour and tumult of th' onrushing spring.

And now she ran no more; the gale gave plumes,

One with the shadows whirled along the grass,

One with the onward smother of veering gulls,

One with the pursuit of cloud after cloud,

Swept she. Pure speed coursed in immortal limbs;

Nostrils drank as from wells of unknown air;

Ears received the smooth silence of racing floods;

Light as of glassy suns froze in her eyes;

Space was given her and she ruled all space.

Spring, author of twofold loveliness,

Who flittest in the mirth of the wild folk,

Profferest greeting in the faces of flowers,

Blowest in the firmamental glory,

Renewest in the heart of the sad human

All faiths, guard thou the innocent spirit

Into whose unknowing hands this noontide

Thou pourest treasure, yet scarce recognised,

That unashamed before man's glib wisdom,

Unabashed beneath the wrath of chance,

She accept in simplicity of homage

The hidden holiness, the created emblem

To be in her, until death shall take her,

The source and secret of eternal spring.

The Stranger

Never am I so alone

   As when I walk among the crowd --

Blurred masks of stern or grinning stone,

   Unmeaning eyes and voices loud.

Gaze dares not encounter face, . . .

   Humbled, I turn my head aside;

When suddenly there is a face . . .

   Pale, subdued and grievous-eyed.

Ah, I know that visage meek,

   Those trembling lips, the eyes that shine

But turn from that which they would seek

   With an air piteous, divine!

There is not a line or scar,

   Seal of sorrow or disgrace,

But I know like sigils are

   Burned in my heart and on my face.

Speak! O speak! Thou art the one!

   But thou hast passed with sad head bowed;

And never am I so alone

   As when I walk among the crowd.

'O Nighingale My Heart'

O Nightingale my heart

How sad thou art!

How heavy is thy wing,

Desperately whirred that thy throat may fling

Song to the tingling silences remote!

Thine eye whose ruddy spark

Burned fiery of late,

How dead and dark!

Why so soon didst thou sing,

And with such turbulence of love and hate?

Learn that there is no singing yet can bring

The expected dawn more near;

And thou art spent already, though the night

Scarce has begun;

What voice, what eyes wilt thou have for the light

When the light shall appear

And O what wings to bear thee t'ward the Sun?

The Pilgrim

Put by the sun my joyful soul,

We are for darkness that is whole;

Put by the wine, now for long years

We must be thirsty with salt tears;

Put by the rose, bind thou instead

The fiercest thorns about thy head;

Put by the courteous tire, we need

But the poor pilgrim's blackest weed;

Put by -- albeit with tears -- thy lute,

Sing but to God or else be mute.

Take leave of friends save such as dare

Thy love with Loneliness to share.

It is full tide. Put by regret.

Turn, turn away. Forget. Forget.

Put by the sun my lightless soul,

We are for darkness that is whole.

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