ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES

ALSO A FAUN'S HOLIDAY & POEMS AND PHANTASIES BY

ROBERT NICHOLS

Author of "Invocation: War Poems and Others"

NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS

INTRODUCTION

1. Of the nature of the poet:

"We are (often) so impressed by the power of poetry that we think of it as something made by a wonderful and unusual person: we do not realize the fact that all the wonder and marvel is in our own brains, that the poet is ourselves. He speaks our language better than we do merely because he is more skilful with it than we are; his skill is part of our skill, his power of our power; generations of English-speaking men and women have made us sensible to these things, and our sensibility comes from the same source that the poet's power of stimulating it comes from. Given a little more sensitiveness to external stimuli, a little more power of associating ideas, a co-ordination of the functions of expression somewhat more apt, a sense of rhythm somewhat keener than the average—given these things we should be poets, too, even as he is.... He is one of us."

[Pg x]

2. Of what English poetry consists:

"English poetry is not a rhythm of sound, but a rhythm of ideas, and the flow of attention-stresses (i.e., varying qualities of words and cadence) which determines its beauty is inseparably connected with the thought; for each of them is a judgment of identity, or a judgment of relation, or an expression of relation, and not a thing of mere empty sound.... He who would think of it as a pleasing arrangement of vocal sounds has missed all chance of ever understanding its meaning. There awaits him only the barren generalities of a foreign prosody, tedious, pedantic, fruitless. And he will flounder ceaselessly amid the scattered timbers of its iambuses, spondees, dactyls, tribrachs, never reaching the firm ground of truth."

"An Introduction To the Scientific Study Of English Poetry,"[1] by Mark Liddell.

[1] Published by Grant Richards (1902). This remarkable book, establishing English poetry as a thing governed from within by its own necessities, and not by rules of æsthetics imposed on it from without, formulates principles which, unperceived, have governed English poetry from the earliest times, which find their greatest exemplar in Shakespeare, and which, though beginning to be realized by the less pedantic of the moderns, are in its pages for the first time lucidly expounded and—such is their adequacy—can, in the end, only be regarded as indubitably proven.—R. M. B. N., 1917.

[Pg 1]

ARDOURS AND ENDURANCES

[Pg 2]

To THE Memory of my Trusty and Gallant Friends: HAROLD STUART GOUGH (King's Royal Rifle Corps) and RICHARD PINSENT (the Worcester Regiment)

[Pg 3]

THE SUMMONS

[Pg 4]

I.—TO——

[Pg 5]

II.—THE PAST

[Pg 6]

III.—THE RECKONING

[Pg 7]

FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT

[Pg 8]

FAREWELL TO PLACE OF COMFORT

[Pg 10]

[Pg 11]

THE APPROACH

[Pg 12]

I.—IN THE GRASS: HALT BY ROADSIDE

[Pg 13]

II.—THE DAY'S MARCH

[Pg 15]

III.—NEARER

[Pg 16]

[Pg 17]

BATTLE

[Pg 18]

I.—NOON

[Pg 19]

II.—NIGHT BOMBARDMENT

[Pg 22]

III.—COMRADES: AN EPISODE

[Pg 27]

IV.—BEHIND THE LINES: NIGHT, FRANCE

[Pg 28]

V.—AT THE WARS

[Pg 30]

VI.—OUT OF TRENCHES: THE BARN, TWILIGHT

[Pg 32]

VII.—BATTERY MOVING UP TO A NEW POSITION FROM REST CAMP: DAWN

[Pg 35]

VIII.—EVE OF ASSAULT: INFANTRY GOING DOWN TO TRENCHES

[Pg 37]

IX.—THE ASSAULT

Note.—(1) "Zero" is the hour agreed upon by the Staff when the infantry are to go over the parapet and advance to the assault. (2) Guns are said to "lift" when, after pounding the front line of the enemy, they lengthen their range and set up a barrier of fire behind his front line to prevent supports moving up. Our infantry then advance.

[Pg 42]

X.—THE LAST MORNING

[Pg 44]

XI.—FULFILMENT

[Pg 45]

THE DEAD

[Pg 46]

I.—THE BURIAL IN FLANDERS

(H. S. G., Ypres, 1916)

[Pg 48]

II.—BOY

[Pg 51]

III.—PLAINT OF FRIENDSHIP BY DEATH BROKEN

(R. P., Loos, 1915)

[Pg 55]

IV.—BY THE WOOD

[Pg 57]

THE AFTERMATH

[Pg 58]

I.—AT THE EBB

[Pg 60]

II.—ALONE

[Pg 61]

III.—THANKSGIVING

[Pg 62]

IV.—ANNIHILATED

[Pg 63]

V.—SHUT OF NIGHT

[Pg 65]

VI.—THE FULL HEART

[Pg 66]

VII.—SONNET: OUR DEAD

[Pg 67]

VIII.—DELIVERANCE

[Pg 69]

A FAUN'S HOLIDAY

[Pg 70]

To my Brother PHILIP NICHOLS

[Pg 71]

'O Fantaisie, emporte-moi sur tes ailes pour désennuyer ma tristesse!'

Flaubert.

[Pg 72]

Roughly planned in Spring, 1914, at Oxford. "Midday in Arcadia" composed July, 1914; "Catch for Spring" adapted from version of 1912 during the same month: both at Grayshott. Taken up again in February, 1916, continued at the Hut, Bray, and, after being frequently interrupted, finished on February 18, 1917, at Ilsington.

The author intends the "hulli" and the "lulli" of the Faun's call in 'Faun's Rally' to be pronounced as if they rhymed with such a word as "fully."

[Pg 73]