"Everything they took from my new poem book
But the fly-leaf and the covers."
But there are one or two other things I should leave inside the singularly attractive covers, and one of them is this:
"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 monkey's paws patter again,
Snakes hiss and flash their eyes:
The bear roars out in hideous pain:
Ann prays and 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."
This is no nursery rhyme, but it is a very important parable. Mr Robert Graves is by nature a poet, but his vision has become blurred, his senses distorted, his nerves jangled by the war. Can no one tell him of the approach of careless day, of birds and dandelion gold, wet grass, cool scents of May? Surely the nightmare of his soul is nearly over, and he can creep out from under the soft quilt of nursery rhymes to the clear light of day and sing us the golden songs that we know are in him, as yet unexpressed.