Robert Nichols

All the loud winds were in the garden wood,
All shadows joyfuller than lissom
Doubled in chasing, all exultant
That ever flung fierce mist and eddying

'Be warned!
I feel the world grow old,
And off Olympus fades the gold Of the simple passionate sun;
And the Gods wither one by one;

Put by the sun my joyful soul,
We are for darkness that is whole;
Put by the wine, now for long
We must be thirsty with salt tears;

The beating of the guns grows louder."Not long, boys, now."My heart burns whiter, fearfuller, prouder;
Hurricanes
As guns redouble their fire.
Through the shaken periscope peepingI glimpse their wire:

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'…

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 the Grass:
Halt by the
In my tired, helpless bodyI feel my sunk heart ache;

He lay, and those who watched him were
To see unheralded beneath the
Twin tears, new-gathered at the price of pain,
Start and at once run crookedly

Evenstar, still
If this twilight thou dost
On a more unhappy head,
On tears lonelier than mine,

Not a sign of life we
In any square close-shuttered
That flanks the road we amble
Toward far trenches through the town.

AS round the cliff I came
The whole bay bared its blaze to me;
Loud sang the wind, the wild sun
The tumbled clouds fled scattering on,

Exquisite stillness!
What
Of earth and air!
How bright atop the

I must remember now how once I woke To find the harsh lamplight stream upon her bed,
The ceiling tremble in its giddy smoke,
And on the wall the agile spider spread,
To hear the reverberate vault of silence shake Beneath the hollow…

upon seeing a portrait of
Something moves in his dust,
Flame sleeps beneath the crust;
O whence had he those

Was there love once?
I have forgotten her.
Was there grief once?
Grief yet is mine.

It was deep night, and over Jerusalem's low roofs The moon floated, drifting through high vaporous woofs.
The moonlight crept and glistened silent, solemn, sweet,
Over dome and column, up empty, endless street;
In the closed,…

The battery grides and jingles,
Mile succeeds to mile;
Shaking the noonday
The guns lunge out awhile,

Come, ye sorrowful, and steep Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep:
For our kisses lightlier run Than the traceries of the sun By the lolling water cast Up grey precipices vast,
Lifting smooth and waem and steep Out of the palely…

For the last time, maybe, upon the knollI stand.
The eve is golden, languid, sad.
Day like a tragic actor plays his
To the last whispered word and falls gold-clad.

Never am I so
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

O Nightingale my
How sad thou art!
How heavy is thy wing,
Desperately whirrëd that thy throat may

How long I have wished for something I know well,
But what that something is I cannot tell.
So often at sunrise in sad tears I
Shivering with longing for its sake;

In a far field, away from England, liesA boy I friended with a care like love;
All day the wide earth aches, the keen wind cries,
The melancholy clouds drive on above.
There, separate from him by a little

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