The Naiads' Music

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols 1893 (Shanklin, ) – 1944 ( Cambridge,)



(From 'A Faun's Holiday')
  
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 warm and steep
Out of the palely shimmering deep.
  
Come, ye sorrowful, and take
Kisses that are but half awake:
For here are eyes O softer far
Than the blossom of the star
Upon the mothy twilit waters,
And here are mouths whose gentle laughters
Are but the echoes of the deep
Laughing and murmuring in its sleep.
  
Come, ye sorrowful, and see
The raindrops flaming goldenly
On the stream's eddies overhead
And dragonflies with drops of red
In the crisp surface of each wing
Threading slant rains that flash and sing,
Or under the water-lily's cup,
From darkling depths, roll slowly up
The bronze flanks of an ancient bream
Into the hot sun's shattered beam,
Or over a sunk tree's bubbled hole
The perch stream in a golden shoal:
Come, ye sorrowful; our deep
Holds dreams lovelier than sleep.
  
But if ye sons of Sorrow come
Only wishing to be numb:
Our eyes are sad as bluebell posies,
Our breasts are soft as silken roses,
And our hands are tenderer
Than the breaths that scarce can stir
The sunlit eglantine that is
Murmurous with hidden bees.
Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.
  
Come, ye sorrowful, for here
No voices sound but fond and clear
Of mouths as lorn as is the rose
That under water doth disclose,
Amid her crimson petals torn,
A heart as golden as the morn;
And here are tresses languorous
As the weeds wander over us,
And brows as holy and as bland
As the honey-coloured sand
Lying sun-entranced below
The lazy water's limpid flow:
Come, ye sorrowful, and steep
Your tired brows in a nectarous sleep.
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Submitted on August 03, 2020

Modified on March 05, 2023

1:38 min read
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Quick analysis:

Scheme x AAbbccaa ddeeffaa xghhiijjkkggaa llfmexmxAA xxnnoofxppggAA
Closest metre Iambic tetrameter
Characters 1,728
Words 322
Stanzas 6
Stanza Lengths 1, 8, 8, 14, 10, 14

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols

Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols (6 September 1893 – 17 December 1944) was an English writer, known as a war poet of the First World War, and a playwright.  more…

All Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols poems | Robert Malise Bowyer Nichols Books

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