My familiar ghost again Comes to see what he can see, Critic, son of Conscious Brain, Spying on our privacy. Slam the window, bolt the door, Yet he’ll enter in and stay; In tomorrow’s book he’ll score Indiscretions of today. Whispered love and muttered fears, How their echoes fly about! None escape his watchful ears, […]

Here down this very way, Here only yesterday King Faun went leaping. He sang, with careless shout Hurling his name about; He sang, with oaken stock His steps from rock to rock In safety keeping, “Here Faun is free, Here Faun is free!” Today against yon pine, Forlorn yet still divine, King Faun leant weeping. […]

A purple whale Proudly sweeps his tail Towards Nineveh; Glassy green Surges between A mile of roaring sea. “O town of gold, Of splendour multifold, Lucre and lust, Leviathan’s eye Can surely spy Thy doom of death and dust.” On curving sands Vengeful Jonah stands. “Yet forty days, Then down, down, Tumbles the town In […]

What could be dafter Than John Skelton’s laughter? What sound more tenderly Than his pretty poetry? So where to rank old Skelton? He was no monstrous Milton, Nor wrote no “Paradise Lost,” So wondered at by most, Phrased so disdainfully, Composed so painfully. He struck what Milton missed, Milling an English grist With homely turn […]

Double red daisies, they’re my flowers, Which nobody else may grow. In a big quarrelsome house like ours They try it sometimes–but no, I root them up because they’re my flowers, Which nobody else may grow. Claire has a tea-rose, but she didn’t plant it; Ben has an iris, but I don’t want it. Daisies, […]

Look at my knees, That island rising from the steamy seas! The candles a tall lightship; my two hands Are boats and barges anchored to the sands, With mighty cliffs all round; They’re full of wine and riches from far lands…. I wonder what it feels like to be drowned? I can make caves, By […]

Father is quite the greatest poet That ever lived anywhere. You say you’re going to write great music– I chose that first: it’s unfair. Besides, now I can’t be the greatest painter and do Christ and angels, or lovely pears and apples and grapes on a green dish, or storms at sea, or anything lovely, […]

“What do you think The bravest drink Under the sky?” “Strong beer,” said I. “There’s a place for everything, Everything, anything, There’s a place for everything Where it ought to be: For a chicken, the hen’s wing; For poison, the bee’s sting; For almond-blossom, Spring; A beerhouse for me.” “There’s a prize for every one […]

You young friskies who today Jump and fight in Father’s hay With bows and arrows and wooden spears, Playing at Royal Welch Fusiliers, Happy though these hours you spend, Have they warned you how games end? Boys, from the first time you prod And thrust with spears of curtain-rod, From the first time you tear […]

Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart’s desire: Jingle pockets full of gold, Marry when they’re seven years old. Every fairy child may keep Two strong ponies and ten sheep; All have houses, each his own, Built of brick or granite […]

To the woods, to the woods is the wizard gone; In his grotto the maiden sits alone. She gazes up with a weary smile At the rafter-hanging crocodile, The slowly swinging crocodile. Scorn has she of her master’s gear, Cauldron, alembic, crystal sphere, Phial, philtre–“Fiddlededee For all such trumpery trash!” quo’ she. “A soldier is […]

Why do you break upon this old, cool peace, This painted peace of ours, With harsh dress hissing like a flock of geese, With garish flowers? Why do you churn smooth waters rough again, Selfish old skin-and-bone? Leave us to quiet dreaming and slow pain, Leave us alone.

With a fork drive Nature out, She will ever yet return; Hedge the flowerbed all about, Pull or stab or cut or burn, She will ever yet return. Look: the constant marigold Springs again from hidden roots. Baffled gardener, you behold New beginnings and new shoots Spring again from hidden roots. Pull or stab or […]

Through long nursery nights he stood By my bed unwearying, Loomed gigantic, formless, queer, Purring in my haunted ear That same hideous nightmare thing, Talking, as he lapped my blood, In a voice cruel and flat, Saying for ever, “Cat! … Cat! … Cat!…” That one word was all he said, That one word through […]

BOY Most venerable and learned sir, Tall and true Philosopher, These rings of smoke you blow all day With such deep thought, what sense have they? PHILOSOPHER Small friend, with prayer and meditation I make an image of Creation. And if your mind is working nimble Straightway you’ll recognize a symbol Of the endless and […]

(August 6, 1916.–Officer previously reported died of wounds, now reported wounded: Graves, Captain R., Royal Welch Fusiliers.) … But I was dead, an hour or more. I woke when I’d already passed the door That Cerberus guards, and half-way down the road To Lethe, as an old Greek signpost showed. Above me, on my stretcher […]

An Idyll Back from the Somme two Fusiliers Limped painfully home; the elder said, S. “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.” R. “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now, Through these great oaks and see the famous bough “Where once a nonsense built her nest With […]

“Gabble-gabble,… brethren,… gabble-gabble!” My window frames forest and heather. I hardly hear the tuneful babble, Not knowing nor much caring whether The text is praise or exhortation, Prayer or thanksgiving, or damnation. Outside it blows wetter and wetter, The tossing trees never stay still. I shift my elbows to catch better The full round sweep […]

Walking through trees to cool my heat and pain, I know that David’s with me here again. All that is simple, happy, strong, he is. Caressingly I stroke Rough hark of the friendly oak. A brook goes bubbling by: the voice is his. Turf burns with pleasant smoke; I laugh at chaffinch and at primroses. […]

Back from the line one night in June, I gave a dinner at Bethune– Seven courses, the most gorgeous meal Money could buy or batman steal. Five hungry lads welcomed the fish With shouts that nearly cracked the dish; Asparagus came with tender tops, Strawberries in cream, and mutton chops. Said Jenkins, as my hand […]