Robert Graves Poems

It doesn’t matter what’s the cause,
What wrong they say we’re righting,
A curse for treaties, bonds and laws,
When we’re to do the fighting!
...

Down in the mud I lay,
Tired out by my long day
Of five damned days and nights,
Five sleepless days and nights,…
...

(From Frise on the Somme in February, 1917, in answer to a letter saying: “I am just finishing my ‘Faun’s Holiday.’ I wish you were here to feed him with cherries.”)


Here by a snowbound river
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The great sun sinks behind the town
Through a red mist of Volnay wine....
But what’s the use of setting down
That glorious blaze behind the town?
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The butterfly, the cabbage white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
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I've whined of coming death, but now, no more!
It's weak and most ungracious. For, say I,
Though still a boy if years are counted, why!
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Christ of His gentleness
Thirsting and hungering,
Walked in the wilderness;
Soft words of grace He spoke
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Sing baloo loo for Jenny
And where is she gone?
Away to spy her mother's land,
Riding all alone.
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With a fork drive Nature out,
She will ever yet return;
Hedge the flowerbed all about,
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
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NEAR Clapham village, where fields began,
Saint Edward met a beggar man.
It was Christmas morning, the church bells tolled,
The old man trembled for the fierce cold.
...