When it is peace, then we may view again With new-won eyes each other's truer form And wonder. Grown more loving-kind and warm We'll grasp firm hands and laugh at the old pain, When it is peace. But until peace, the storm, The darkness and the thunder and the rain.
Robert Graves was born July 26, 1895. One of "the three rhyming musketeers" (the other two being the poets Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Nichols), he was one of several writers who, roused by the war and giving himself to his country, refused to glorify warfare or chant new hymns of hate. Like Sassoon, Graves also reacts against the storm of fury and blood-lust (see his poem "To a Dead Boche"), but, fortified by a lighter and more whimsical spirit, where Sassoon is violent, Graves is volatile; where Sassoon is bitter, Graves is almost blithe.
An unconquerable gayety rises from his _Fairies and Fusiliers_ (1917), a surprising and healing humor that is warmly individual. In _Country Sentiment_ (1919) Graves turns to a fresh and more serious simplicity. But a buoyant fancy ripples beneath the most archaic of his ballads and a quaintly original turn of mind saves them from their own echoes.
It's hard to know if you're alive or dead When steel and fire go roaring through your head.
One moment you'll be crouching at your gun Traversing, mowing heaps down half in fun: The next, you choke and clutch at your right breast-- No time to think--leave all--and off you go ... To Treasure Island where the Spice winds blow, To lovely groves of mango, quince and lime-- Breathe no good-bye, but ho, for the Red West! It's a queer time.
You're charging madly at them yelling "Fag!" When somehow something gives and your feet drag. You fall and strike your head; yet feel no pain And find ... you're digging tunnels through the hay In the Big Barn, 'cause it's a rainy day. Oh, springy hay, and lovely beams to climb! You're back in the old sailor suit again. It's a queer time.
Or you'll be dozing safe in your dug-out-- A great roar--the trench shakes and falls about-- You're struggling, gasping, struggling, then ... _hullo_! Elsie comes tripping gaily down the trench, Hanky to nose--that lyddite makes a stench-- Getting her pinafore all over grime. Funny! because she died ten years ago! It's a queer time.