Home ⇒ 📌Robert Graves ⇒ The Troll's Nosegay
The Troll's Nosegay
A simple nosegay! Was that much to ask?
(Winter still nagged, with scarce a bud yet showing.)
He loved her ill, if he resigned the task.
‘Somewhere,’ she cried, ‘there must be blossom blowing.’
It seems my lady wept and the troll swore
By Heaven he hated tears: he’d cure her spleen –
Where she had begged one flower he’d shower fourscore,
A bunch fit to amaze a China Queen.
Cold fog-drawn Lily, pale mist-magic Rose
He conjured, and in a glassy cauldron set
WIth elvish unsubstantial Mignonette
And such vague blooms as wandering dreams enclose.
But she?
Awed,
Charmed to tears,
Distracted,
Yet –
Even yet, perhaps, a trifle piqued – who knows?
(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Somewhere upon the general Earth Somewhere upon the general Earth Itself exist Today The Magic passive but extant That consecrated me Indifferent Seasons doubtless play Where I for right to be Would pay each Atom that I am But Immortality Reserving that but just to prove Another Date of Thee Oh God of Width, do not for us Curtail Eternity!...
- Madonna Mia A lily-girl, not made for this world’s pain, With brown, soft hair close braided by her ears, And longing eyes half veiled by slumberous tears Like bluest water seen through mists of rain: Pale cheeks whereon no love hath left its stain, Red underlip drawn in for fear of love, And white throat, whiter than […]...
- Longing Could I from this valley drear, Where the mist hangs heavily, Soar to some more blissful sphere, Ah! how happy should I be! Distant hills enchant my sight, Ever young and ever fair; To those hills I’d take my flight Had I wings to scale the air. Harmonies mine ear assail, Tunes that breathe a […]...
- Moonlit Night Tonight at Fu-chou, this moon she watches Alone in our room. And my little, far-off Children, too young to understand what keeps me Away, or even remember Chang’an. By now, Her hair will be mist-scented, her jade-white Arms chilled in its clear light. When Will it find us together again, drapes drawn Open, light traced […]...
- Lily-Bell and Thistledown Song II Thistledown in prison sings: Bright shines the summer sun, Soft is the summer air; Gayly the wood-birds sing, Flowers are blooming fair. But, deep in the dark, cold rock, Sadly I dwell, Longing for thee, dear friend, Lily-Bell! Lily-Bell! Lily-Bell replies: Through sunlight and summer air I have sought for thee long, Guided by birds […]...
- My Lady in Her White Silk Shawl My lady in her white silk shawl Is like a lily dim, Within the twilight of the room Enthroned and kind and prim. My lady! Pale gold is her hair. Until she smiles her face Is pale with far Hellenic moods, With thoughts that find no place In our harsh village of the West Wherein […]...
- Last Answers I wrote a poem on the mist And a woman asked me what I meant by it. I had thought till then only of the beauty of the mist, how pearl and gray of it mix and reel, And change the drab shanties with lighted lamps at evening into points of mystery quivering with color. […]...
- Your Poem My poem may be yours indeed In melody and tone, If in its rhythm you can read A music of your own; If in its pale woof you can weave Your lovelier design, ‘Twill make my lyric, I believe, More yours than mine. I’m but a prompter at the best; Crude cues are all I […]...
- Budapest Museum of Fine Arts a Memo from the Past This is to compliment those Who have made us petrified And conjured up evidence of our sufferings Into what they call a tourist’s attraction...
- Unforgotten I know a garden where the lilies gleam, And one who lingers in the sunshine there; She is than white-stoled lily far more fair, And oh, her eyes are heaven-lit with dream! I know a garret, cold and dark and drear, And one who toils and toils with tireless pen, Until his brave, sad eyes […]...
- Tz'u No. 9 (Weary) To the tune of “Rinsing Silk Stream” Saddened by the dying spring, I am too weary To rearrange my hair. Plum flowers, newly fallen, drift about the courtyard In the evening wind. The moon looks pale and light clouds float To and fro. Incense lies idle in the jade duck-shaped burner. The cherry-red bed-curtain is […]...
- A New Theme I FAIN would leave the tender songs I sang to you of old, Thinking the oft-sung beauty wrongs The magic never told. And touch no more the thoughts, the moods, That win the easy praise; But venture in the untrodden woods To carve the future ways. Though far or strange or cold appear The shadowy […]...
- First Sight Lambs that learn to walk in snow When their bleating clouds the air Meet a vast unwelcome, know Nothing but a sunless glare. Newly stumbling to and fro All they find, outside the fold, Is a wretched width of cold. As they wait beside the ewe, Her fleeces wetly caked, there lies Hidden round them, […]...
- To an Ungentle Critic The great sun sinks behind the town Through a red mist of Volnay wine…. But what’s the use of setting down That glorious blaze behind the town? You’ll only skip the page, you’ll look For newer pictures in this book; You’ve read of sunsets rich as mine. A fresh wind fills the evening air With […]...
- MACTAVISH I do not write for love of pelf, Nor lust for phantom fame; I do not rhyme to please myself, Nor yet to win acclaim: No, strange to say it is my plan, What gifts I have, to lavish Upon a simple working man MACTAVISH. For that’s the rather smeary name, Of dreary toil a […]...
- Maude Clare Out of the church she followed them With a lofty step and mien: His bride was like a village maid, Maude Clare was like a queen. “Son Thomas, ” his lady mother said, With smiles, almost with tears: “May Nell and you but live as true As we have done for years; “Your father thirty […]...
- Sonnet 08 – What can I give thee back, O liberal What can I give thee back, O liberal And princely giver, who hast brought the gold And purple of thine heart, unstained, untold, And laid them on the outside of the-wall For such as I to take or leave withal, In unexpected largesse? am I cold, Ungrateful, that for these most manifold High gifts, I […]...
- Poor Poet ‘A man should write to please himself,’ He proudly said. Well, see his poems on the shelf, Dusty, unread. When he came to my shop each day, So peaked and cold, I’d sneak one of his books away And say ’twas sold. And then by chance he looked below, And saw a stack Of his […]...
- The Lily Night after night Darkness Enters the face Of the lily Which, lightly, Closes its five walls Around itself, And its purse Of honey, And its fragrance, And is content To stand there In the garden, Not quite sleeping, And, maybe, Saying in lily language Some small words We can’t hear Even when there is no […]...
- AUTUMN FEELINGS FLOURISH greener, as ye clamber, Oh ye leaves, to seek my chamber, Up the trellis’d vine on high! May ye swell, twin-berries tender, Juicier far, and with more splendour Ripen, and more speedily! O’er ye broods the sun at even As he sinks to rest, and heaven Softly breathes into your ear All its fertilising […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- THE CRUEL MAID AND, cruel maid, because I see You scornful of my love, and me, I’ll trouble you no more, but go My way, where you shall never know What is become of me; there I Will find me out a path to die, Or learn some way how to forget You and your name for ever; […]...
- NEW LOVE, NEW LIFE [Written at the time of Goethe’s connection With Lily.] HEART! my heart! what means this feeling? What oppresseth thee so sore? What strange life is o’er me stealing! I acknowledge thee no more. Fled is all that gave thee gladness, Fled the cause of all thy sadness, Fled thy peace, thine industry Ah, why suffer […]...
- Wash of Cold River Wash of cold river In a glacial land, Ionian water, Chill, snow-ribbed sand, Drift of rare flowers, Clear, with delicate shell – Like leaf enclosing Frozen lily-leaf, Camellia texture, Colder than a rose; Wind-flower That keeps the breath Of the north-wind These and none other; Intimate thoughts and kind Reach out to share The treasure […]...
- Jugurtha How cold are thy baths, Apollo! Cried the African monarch, the splendid, As down to his death in the hollow Dark dungeons of Rome he descended, Uncrowned, unthroned, unattended; How cold are thy baths, Apollo! How cold are thy baths, Apollo! Cried the Poet, unknown, unbefriended, As the vision, that lured him to follow, With […]...
- Admire their style I’m reading fellow poets’ blogs today, A sustaining source of entertainment; I admire their style without exciting comment Or resorting to an unkind eye, simple though It is to sigh about uneasy affirmation. I hope when they read me (if they ever do) They rest as easy on my lack of finished form, The hazy, […]...
- There Are Not Many Kingdoms Left I write the lips of the moon upon her shoulders. In a Temple of silvery farawayness I guard her to rest. For her bed I write a stillness over all the swans of the World. With the morning breath of the snow leopard I Cover her against any hurt. Using the pen of rivers and […]...
- Leda Where the slow river Meets the tide, A red swan lifts red wings And darker beak, And underneath the purple down Of his soft breast Uncurls his coral feet. Through the deep purple Of the dying heat Of sun and mist, The level ray of sun-beam Has caressed The lily with dark breast, And flecked […]...
- Sonnet to the Memory of Miss Maria Linley So bends beneath the storm yon balmy flow’r, Whose spicy blossoms once perfum’d the gale; So press’d with tears reclines yon lily pale, Obedient to the rude and beating show’r. Still is the LARK, that hov’ring o’er yon spray, With jocund carol usher’d in the morn; And mute the NIGHTINGALE, whose tender lay Melted the […]...
- La Belle Dame Sans Merci Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, Alone and palely loitering; The sedge is wither’d from the lake, And no birds sing. Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel’s granary is full, And the harvest’s done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever […]...
- Sonnet XXXVI: Thou Purblind Boy Cupid Conjured Thou purblind boy, since thou hast been so slack To wound her heart, whose eyes have wounded me, And suffer’d her to glory in my wrack, Thus to my aid I lastly conjure thee: By hellish Styx, by which the Thund’rer swears, By thy fair mother’s unavoided power, By Hecate’s names, by Proserpine’s […]...
- The Nymph's Song to Hylas I KNOW a little garden-close Set thick with lily and red rose, Where I would wander if I might From dewy dawn to dewy night, And have one with me wandering. And though within it no birds sing, And though no pillar’d house is there, And though the apple boughs are bare Of fruit and […]...
- Mist Forms THE SHEETS of night mist travel a long valley. I know why you came at sundown in a scarf mist. What was it we touched asking nothing and asking all? How many times can death come and pay back what we saw? In the oath of the sod, the lips that swore, In the oath […]...
- Aftermath I learnt to write to you in happier days, And every letter was a piece I chipped From off my heart, a fragment newly clipped From the mosaic of life; its blues and grays, Its throbbing reds, I gave to earn your praise. To make a pavement for your feet I stripped My soul for […]...
- Portrait (For S. A.)TO write one book in five years Or five books in one year, To be the painter and the thing painted, … where are we, bo? Wait-get his number. The barber shop handling is here And the tweeds, the cheviot, the Scotch Mist, And the flame orange scarf. Yet there is more-he sleeps […]...
- Elegy to the Memory of Werter “With female Fairies will thy tomb be haunted “And worms will not come to thee.” SHAKSPERE. WHEN from Day’s closing eye the lucid tears Fall lightly on the bending lily’s head; When o’er the blushing sky night’s curtains spread, And the tall mountain’s summit scarce appears; When languid Evening, sinking to repose, Her filmy mantle […]...
- November There is wind where the rose was, Cold rain where sweet grass was, And clouds like sheep Stream o’er the steep Grey skies where the lark was. Nought warm where your hand was, Nought gold where your hair was, But phantom, forlorn, Beneath the thorn, Your ghost where your face was. Cold wind where your […]...
- The Red Blaze is the Morning The Red Blaze is the Morning The Violet is Noon The Yellow Day is falling And after that is none But Miles of Sparks at Evening Reveal the Width that burned The Territory Argent that Never yet consumed...
- From you have I been absent in the spring… (Sonnet 98) From you have I been absent in the spring, When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, Hath put a spirit of youth in everything, That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him, Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell Of different flowers in odor and in hue, Could make me any […]...
- Merlin O Merlin in your crystal cave Deep in the diamond of the day, Will there ever be a singer Whose music will smooth away The furrow drawn by Adam’s finger Across the memory and the wave? Or a runner who’ll outrun Man’s long shadow driving on, Break through the gate of memory And hang the […]...
« See