Poems by Robert Nichols

All Poems Original Poems Translations

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The Pilgrim

Put by the sun my joyful soul,

We are for darkness that is whole;

Put by the wine, now for long years

We must be thirsty with salt tears;

Put by the rose, bind thou instead

The fiercest thorns about thy head;

Put by the courteous tire, we need

But the poor pilgrim's blackest weed;

by Robert Nichols

The Approach

In the Grass: Halt by the Wayside

In my tired, helpless body

I feel my sunk heart ache;

But suddenly, loudly

The far, the great guns shake.

Is it sudden terror

Burdens my heart? My hand

by Robert Nichols

Seventeen

All the loud winds were in the garden wood,

All shadows joyfuller than lissom hounds

Doubled in chasing, all exultant clouds

That ever flung fierce mist and eddying fire

Across heavens deeper than blue polar seas

Fled over the sceptre-spikes of the chestnuts,

Over the speckle of the wych-elms' green.

She shouted; then stood still, hushed and abashed

by Robert Nichols

The Day's March

The battery grides and jingles,

Mile succeeds to mile;

Shaking the noonday sunshine

The guns lunge out awhile,

And then are still awhile.

We amble along the highway;

The reeking, powdery dust

Ascends and cakes our faces

by Robert Nichols

The Stranger

Never am I so alone

As when I walk among the crowd —

Blurred masks of stern or grinning stone,

Unmeaning eyes and voices loud.

Gaze dares not encounter gaze,…

Humbled, I turn my head aside;

When suddenly there is a face…

Pale, subdued and grievous-eyed.

by Robert Nichols

PÆan

upon seeing a portrait of Blake

Something moves in his dust,

Flame sleeps beneath the crust;

O whence had he those eyes

Lit with celestial surprise?

From what world blew that gust?

Are we near to Paradise?

Gather a chaplet of five stars

by Robert Nichols

The Sprig of Lime

He lay, and those who watched him were amazed

To see unheralded beneath the lids

Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain,

Start and at once run crookedly athwart

Cheeks channelled long by pain, never by tears.

So desolate too the sigh next uttered

They had wept also, but his great lips moved,

And bending down one heard, 'A sprig of lime;

by Robert Nichols

O Nightingale My Heart

O Nightingale my heart

How sad thou art!

How heavy is thy wing,

Desperately whirrëd that thy throat may fling

Song to the tingling silences remote!

Thine eye whose ruddy spark

Burned fiery of late,

How dead and dark!

by Robert Nichols

Night Rhapsody

How beautiful it is to wake at night,

When over all there reigns the ultimate spell

Of complete silence, darkness absolute,

To feel the world, tilted on axle-tree,

In slow gyration, with no sensible sound,

Unless to ears of unimagined beings,

Resident incorporeal or stretched

In vigilance of ecstasy among

by Robert Nichols

Farewell

For the last time, maybe, upon the knoll

I stand. The eve is golden, languid, sad.

Day like a tragic actor plays his role

To the last whispered word and falls gold-clad.

I, too, take leave of all I ever had.

They shall not say I went with heavy heart:

Heavy I am, but soon I shall be free,

I love them all, but oh I now depart

by Robert Nichols

The Assault

The beating of the guns grows louder.

"Not long, boys, now."

My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder;

Hurricanes grow

As guns redouble their fire.

Through the shaken periscope peeping

I glimpse their wire:

Black earth, fountains of earth rise, leaping,

by Robert Nichols

At the Wars

Now that I am ta'en away

And may not see another day

What is it to my eye appears?

What sound rings in my stricken ears?

Not even the voice of any friend

Or eyes beloved-world-without-end,

But scenes and sounds of the country-side

In far England across the tide:

by Robert Nichols