  There are not many reasons why we should read Robert Graves, but one reason is of such outstanding importance that it overshadows the want of many. While Siegfried Sassoon and Osbert Sitwell have vented their vitriol on the old, Mr Graves in Country Sentiment has run away into the land of nursery rhymes as an escape from the haunting horrors of our post-war era. There are strong men of little imagination who have wiped off the memory of the war from their minds like chalk-marks off a slate: there are others who will be haunted by it for the rest of their lives. Robert Graves is one of the latter: That is why he prays that "[But may] the gift of heavenly peace And glory for all time Keep the boy Tom who tending geese First made the nursery rhyme." Only in the contemplation of childish toys can he regain repose. But nursery rhymes and childish toys are as flimsy as gossamer, the latter too easily get broken, the former are too often patently absurd. There is a gnat-like thinness even in this delicious little song: "Small gnats that fly In hot July And lodge in sleeping ears, Can rouse therein A trumpet's din With Day-of-Judgment fears. Small mice at night Can wake more fright Than lions at midday. An urchin small Torments us all Who tread his prickly way. A straw will crack The camel's back, To die we need but sip, So little sand As fills the hand Can stop a steaming ship. One smile relieves A heart that grieves Though deadly sad it be, And one hard look Can close the book That lovers love to see." He listens to the pale-bearded Janus, who urges him to "Sing and laugh and easily run Through the wide waters of my plain, Bathe in my waters, drink my sun, And draw my creatures with soft song; They shall follow you along Graciously with no doubt or pain." So he extols the simple rhymes that we learnt in childhood's days and seeks to add to them. "So these same rhymes shall still be told To children yet unborn, While false philosophy growing old Fades and is killed by scorn." Unfortunately it is not given to any modern to imitate with any degree of success either the ballads our ancestors loved or the nursery rhymes which all children have learnt: this age is too sophisticated and this avenue of escape is denied to Mr Graves: one of the lessons that we find most painful in the learning is that we are the product of our own age and cannot get away from it. Mr Graves anticipates his reviewers in his L'Envoi when he says: "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, 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. |
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