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!

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols (1893–1944) was an English poet, playwright, novelist, and war poet of the First World War. He was one of the most prominent poets of the war generation and served as an artillery officer on the Western Front. His poetry often reflects the horrors of war and his experiences. Nichols was also involved in literary circles in both England and the United States. Throughout his career, he published several volumes of poetry, plays, and a novel.

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols

The Assault

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols, Simple Poetry

Night Rhapsody

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols, Simple Poetry

The Pilgrim

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols, Simple Poetry

O Nightingale My Heart

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols, Simple Poetry

English

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November

As I walk the misty hill
All is languid, fogged, and still;
Not a note of any bird
Nor any motion's hint is heard,
Save from soaking thickets round
Trickle or water's rushing sound,
And from ghostly trees the drip
Of runnel dews or whispering slip
Of leaves, which in a body launch
Listlessly from the stagnant branch
To strew the marl, already strown,
With litter sodden as its own,

A rheum, like blight, hangs on the briars,
And from the clammy ground suspires
A sweet frail sick autumnal scent
Of stale frost furring weeds long spent;
And wafted on, like one who sleeps,
A feeble vapour hangs or creeps,
Exhaling on the fungus mould
A breath of age, fatigue, and cold.

Oozed from the bracken's desolate track,
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Lament, Occasioned By The Unfortunate Issue Of A Friend's Amour.

    "Alas! how oft does goodness wound itself!
    And sweet affection prove the spring of woe."

Home.


I.

    O thou pale orb, that silent shines,
        While care-untroubled mortals sleep!
    Thou seest a wretch who inly pines,
        And wanders here to wail and weep!
    With woe I nightly vigils keep,
        Beneath thy wan, unwarming beam,
    And mourn, in lamentation deep,
        How life and love are all a dream.

II.

    A joyless view thy rays adorn
        The faintly marked distant hill:
    I joyless view thy trembling horn,
        Reflected in the gurgling rill:
    My fondly-fluttering heart, be still:
        Thou busy pow'r, Remembrance, cease!
    Ah! must the agonizing thrill
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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 ...

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols

Fragment III - Years After

Fade off the ridges, rosy light,
Fade slowly from the last gray height,
And leave no gloomy cloud to grieve
The heart of this enchanted eve!

All things beneath the still sky seem
Bound by the spell of a sweet dream;
In the dusk forest, dreamingly,
Droops slowly down each plumèd head;
The river flowing softly by
Dreams of the sea; the quiet sea
Dreams of the unseen stars; and I
Am dreaming of the dreamless dead.

The river has a silken sheen,
But red rays of the sunset stain
Its pictures, from the steep shore caught,
Till shades of rock, and fern, and tree
Glow like the figures on a pane
Of some old church by twilight seen,
Or like the rich devices wrought
In mediaeval tapestry.

All lonely in a drifting boat
Through shi...

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Ashes Of Soldiers

Again a verse for sake of you,
You soldiers in the ranks--you Volunteers,
Who bravely fighting, silent fell,
To fill unmention'd graves.

Ashes of soldiers!
As I muse, retrospective, murmuring a chant in thought,
Lo! the war resumes--again to my sense your shapes,
And again the advance of armies.

Noiseless as mists and vapors,
From their graves in the trenches ascending,
From the cemeteries all through Virginia and Tennessee,
From every point of the compass, out of the countless unnamed graves,
In wafted clouds, in myraids large, or squads of twos or threes, or single ones, they come,
And silently gather round me.

Now sound no note, O trumpeters!
Not at the head of my cavalry, parading on spirited horses,
With sabres drawn and glist'ning, and ...

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Sullen Moods

Love, do not count your labour lost
    Though I turn sullen, grim, retired
Even at your side; my thought is crossed
    With fancies by old longings fired.

And when I answer you, some days
    Vaguely and wildly, do not fear
That my love walks forbidden ways,
    Breaking the ties that hold it here.

If I speak gruffly, this mood is
    Mere indignation at my own
Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;
    I forget the gentler tone.

'You,' now that you have come to be
    My one beginning, prime and end,
I count at last as wholly 'me,'
    Lover no longer nor yet friend.

Friendship is flattery, though close hid;
    Must I then flatter my own mind?
And must (which laws of shame forbid)
    Blind love of you make self-love b...

Robert von Ranke Graves