Finland

Feet and faces tingle
In that frore land:
Legs wobble and go wingle,
You scarce can stand.

The skies are jewelled all around,
The ploughshare snaps in the iron ground,
The Finn with face like paper
And eyes like a lighted taper
Hurls his rough rune
At the wintry moon
And stamps to mark the tune.

Robert von Ranke Graves

Robert von Ranke Graves was a British poet, historical novelist, critic, and classicist. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves, a distinguished Irish poet and figure in the Gaelic revival. Known for his war poetry, love poems, and scholarly works, he created a lasting literary legacy, including his interpretations of the Greek myths. Graves was also a soldier in World War I, an experience that profoundly influenced his writing.

Robert von Ranke Graves

A Frosty Night.

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

Free Verse

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

When I'm Killed

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

To Lucasta On Going To The War, For The Fourth Time

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

English

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The Conquest Of Finland

Across the frozen marshes
The winds of autumn blow,
And the fen-lands of the Wetter
Are white with early snow.
But where the low, gray headlands
Look o'er the Baltic brine,
A bark is sailing in the track
Of England's battle-line.
No wares hath she to barter
For Bothnia's fish and grain;
She saileth not for pleasure,
She saileth not for gain.
But still by isle or mainland
She drops her, anchor down,
Where'er the British cannon
Rained fire on tower and town.
Outspake the ancient Amtman,
At the gate of Helsingfors:
"Why comes this ship a-spying
In the track of England's wars?"
"God bless her," said the coast-guard,
"God bless the ship, I say.
The holy angels trim the sails
That speed her on her way!
"Where'er she drops her ...

John Greenleaf Whittier

Good Cheer (1870)

(See Note 49)

So let these songs their story tell
To all who in the Northland dwell,
Since many friends request it.
(That Finland's folk with them belong
In the wide realm of Northern song,
I grateful must attest it.)

I send these songs - and now I find
Most of them have riot what my mind
Has deepest borne and favored:
Some are too hasty, some too brief,
Some, long in stock, have come to grief,
Some with raw youth are flavored.

I lived far more than e'er I sang;
Thought, ire, and mirth unceasing rang
Around me, where I guested;
To be where loud life's battles call
For me was well-nigh more than all
My pen on page arrested.

What's true and strong has growing-room,
And will perhaps eternal bloom,
Without black ink...

Bjørnstjerne Martinius Bjørnson

The White Evening.

From gray, bleak hills 'neath steely skies
Thro' beards of ice the forests roar;
Along the river's humming shore
The skimming skater bird-like flies.

On windy meads where wave white breaks,
Where fettered briers' glist'ning hands
Reach to the cold moon's ghastly lands,
Hoots the lorn owl, and crouching quakes.

With frowsy snow blanched is the world;
Stiff sweeps the wind thro' murmuring pines,
Then fiend-like deep-entangled whines
Thro' the dead oak, that vagrant twirled

Phantoms the cliff o'er the wild wold:
Ghost-vested willows rim the stream,
Low hang lank limbs where in a dream
The houseless hare leaps o'er the cold

On snow-tressed crags that twinkling flash,
Like champions mailed for clanking war,
Glares down large Phosph...

Madison Julius Cawein

Rocky Acres.

This is a wild land, country of my choice,
    With harsh craggy mountain, moor ample and bare.
Seldom in these acres is heard any voice
    But voice of cold water that runs here and there
    Through rocks and lank heather growing without care.
No mice in the heath run nor no birds cry
For fear of the dark speck that floats in the sky.

He soars and he hovers rocking on his wings,
    He scans his wide parish with a sharp eye,
He catches the trembling of small hidden things,
    He tears them in pieces, dropping from the sky:
    Tenderness and pity the land will deny,
Where life is but nourished from water and rock
A hardy adventure, full of fear and shock.

Time has never journeyed to this lost land,
    Crakeberries and heather bloom out of date,

Robert von Ranke Graves

On The Rhine

Vain is the effort to forget.
Some day I shall be cold, I know,
As is the eternal moon-lit snow
Of the high Alps, to which I go:
But ah, not yet! not yet!

Vain is the agony of grief.
Tis true, indeed, an iron knot
Ties straitly up from mine thy lot,
And were it snapt, thou lovst me not!
But is despair relief?

Awhile let me with thought have done;
And as this brimmd unwrinkled Rhine
And that far purple mountain line
Lie sweetly in the look divine
Of the slow-sinking sun;

So let me lie, and calm as they
Let beam upon my inward view
Those eyes of deep, soft, lucent hue,
Eyes too expressive to be blue,
Too lovely to be grey.

Ah Quiet, all things feel thy balm!
Those blue hills too, this rivers flow,
Were re...

Matthew Arnold

To Robert Nichols

(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
In scrapen holes we shiver,
And like old bitterns we
Boom to you plaintively:
Robert how can I rhyme
Verses for your desire,
Sleek fauns and cherry-time,
Vague music and green trees,
Hot sun and gentle breeze,
England in June attire,
And life born young again,
For your gay goatish brute
Drunk with warm melody
Singing on beds of thyme
With red and rolling eye,
All the Devonian plain,
Lips dark with juicy stain,
Ears hung with bobbing fruit?
Why should I keep him time?
Why in this cold and rime,
Where even to dream is pain?
No, Robe...

Robert von Ranke Graves