Thunder At Night.

Restless and hot two children lay
    Plagued with uneasy dreams,
Each wandered lonely through false day
    A twilight torn with screams.

True to the bed-time story, Ben
    Pursued his wounded bear,
Ann dreamed of chattering monkey men,
    Of snakes twined in her hair...

Now high aloft above the town
    The thick clouds gather and break,
A flash, a roar, and rain drives down:
    Aghast the young things wake.

Trembling for what their terror was,
    Surprised by instant doom,
With lightning in the looking glass,
    Thunder that rocks the room.

The monkeys' paws patter again,
    Snakes hiss and flash their eyes:
The bear roars out in hideous pain:
    Ann prays:    her brother cries.

They cannot guess, could not be told
    How soon comes careless day,
With birds and dandelion gold,
    Wet grass, cool scents of May.

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

Nebuchadnezzar's Fall.

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

The Well-Dressed Children.

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

A Rhyme Of Friends.

Robert von Ranke Graves, Simple Poetry

English

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The Dream

Thou scarest me with dreams.
    -JOB.

When Night's last hours, like haunting spirits, creep
With listening terrors round the couch of sleep,
And Midnight, brooding in its deepest dye,
Seizes on Fear with dismal sympathy,
"I dreamed a dream" something akin to fate,
Which Superstition's blackest thoughts create--
Something half natural to the grave that seems,
Which Death's long trance of slumber haply dreams;
A dream of staggering horrors and of dread,
Whose shadows fled not when the vision fled,
But clung to Memory with their gloomy view,
Till Doubt and Fancy half believed it true.

That time was come, or seem'd as it was come,
When Death no longer makes the grave his home;
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Fragments.

I.

    I round the threshold wandering here,
    Vainly the tempest and the rain invoke,
    That they may keep my lady prisoner.

    And yet the wind was howling in the woods,
    The roving thunder bellowing in the clouds,
    Before the dawn had risen in the sky.

    O ye dear clouds! O heaven! O earth! O trees!
    My lady goes! Have mercy, if on earth
    Unhappy lovers ever mercy find!

    Awake, ye whirlwinds! storm-charged clouds, awake,
    O'erwhelm me with your floods, until the sun
    To other lands brings back the light of day!

    Heaven opens; the wind falls; the grass, the leaves
    Are motionless, around; the dazzling sun
    In my tear-laden eyes remorseless shines.


II.

    The light of d...

Giacomo Leopardi

Ghost Raddled.

"Come, surly fellow, come!    A song!"
    What, madmen?    Sing to you?
Choose from the clouded tales of wrong
    And terror I bring to you.

Of a night so torn with cries,
    Honest men sleeping
Start awake with glaring eyes,
    Bone-chilled, flesh creeping.

Of spirits in the web hung room
    Up above the stable,
Groans, knockings in the gloom,
    The dancing table.

Of demons in the dry well
    That cheep and mutter,
Clanging of an unseen bell,
    Blood choking the gutter.

Of lust frightful, past belief,
    Lurking unforgotten,
Unrestrainable endless grief
    From breasts long rotten.

A song?    What laughter or what song
    Can this house remember?
Do flowers and butterflies belong
  ...

Robert von Ranke Graves

Outlaws.

Owls: they whinney down the night,
    Bats go zigzag by.
Ambushed in shadow out of sight
    The outlaws lie.

Old gods, shrunk to shadows, there
    In the wet woods they lurk,
Greedy of human stuff to snare
    In webs of murk.

Look up, else your eye must drown
    In a moving sea of black
Between the tree-tops, upside down
    Goes the sky-track.

Look up, else your feet will stray
    Towards that dim ambuscade,
Where spider-like they catch their prey
    In nets of shade.

For though creeds whirl away in dust,
    Faith fails and men forget,
These aged gods of fright and lust
    Cling to life yet.

Old gods almost dead, malign,
    Starved of their ancient dues,
Incense and fruit, fire, blood and w...

Robert von Ranke Graves

A Thunder Storm.

The day was hot and the day was dumb,
Save for cricket's chirr or the bee's low hum,
Not a bird was seen or a butterfly,
And ever till noon was over, the sun
Glared down with a yellow and terrible eye;

Glared down in the woods, where the breathless boughs
Hung heavy and faint in a languid drowse,
And the ferns were curling with thirst and heat;
Glared down on the fields where the sleepy cows
Stood munching the grasses, dry and sweet.

Then a single cloud rose up in the west,
With a base of gray and a white, white crest;
It rose and it spread a mighty wing.
And swooped at the sun, though he did his best
And struggled and fought like a wounded thing.

And the woods awoke, and the sleepers heard,
Each heavily hanging leaflet stirred
With a li...

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Vagrancy

When the slow year creeps hay-ward, and the skies
Are warming in the summer's mild surprise,
And the still breeze disturbs each leafy frond
Like hungry fishes dimpling in a pond,
It is a pleasant thing to dream at ease
On sun-warmed thyme, not far from beechen trees.

A robin flashing in a rowan-tree,
A wanton robin, spills his melody
As if he had such store of golden tones
That they were no more worth to him than stones:
The sunny lizards dream upon the ledges:
Linnets titter in and out the hedges,
Or swoop among the freckled butterflies.

Down to a beechen hollow winds the track
And tunnels past my twilit bivouac:
Two spiring wisps of smoke go singly up
And scarcely tremble in the leafy air.

There are more shadows in this loamy cup
...

Richard Arthur Warren Hughes