The city's heat is like a leaden pall--
Its lowered lamps glow in the midnight air
Like mammoth orange-moths that flit and flare
Through the dark tapestry of night. The tall
Black houses crush the creeping beggars down,
Who walk beneath and think of breezes cool,
Of silver bodies bathing in a pool;
Or trees that whisper in some far, small town
Whose quiet nursed them, when they thought that gold
Was merely metal, not a grave of mould
In which men bury all that's fine and fair.
When they could chase the jewelled butterfly
Through the green bracken-scented lanes or sigh
For all the future held so rich and rare;
When, though they knew it not, their baby cries
Were lovely as the jewelled butterflies.
_Robert Nichols_
Robert Nichols was born on the Isle of Wight in 1893. His first
volume, _Invocations_ (1915), was published while he was at the front,
Nichols having joined the army while he was still an undergraduate at
Trinity College, Oxford. After serving one year as second lieutenant
in the Royal Field Artillery, he was incapacitated by shell shock,
visiting America in 1918-19 as a lecturer. His _Ardours and
Endurances_ (1917) is the most representative work of this poet,
although his new volume, _The Flower of Flame_ (1920), shows a steady
advance in power.