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Robert Graves - The Bough Of Nonsense
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Back from the Somme two Fusiliers  
    Limped painfully home; the elder said,  
S.  “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years  
    This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.”  
R.  “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now,
    Through these great oaks and see the famous bough  
  
    ”Where once a nonsense built her nest  
    With skulls and flowers and all things queer,  
    In an old boot, with patient breast  
    Hatching three eggs; and the next year…”
S.  “Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid  
    Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did.”  
  
    Said he, “Before this quaint mood fails,  
    We’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,”  
R.  “Hanging it up with monkey tails
    In a deep grove all hushed and dim….”  
S.  “To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,”  
R.  “Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,”  
  
S.  “Which men are wise beyond their time,  
    And worship nonsense, no one more.”
R.  “Hard by, among old quince and lime,  
    They’ve built a temple with no floor,”  
S.  “And whosoever worships in that place,  
    He disappears from sight and leaves no trace.”  
  
R.  “Once the Galatians built a fane
    To Sense: what duller God than that?”  
S.  “But the first day of autumn rain  
    The roof fell in and crushed them flat.”  
R.  “Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls  
    When nonsense is foundation for the walls.”
  
    I tell him old Galatian tales;  
    He caps them in quick Portuguese,  
    While phantom creatures with green scales  
    Scramble and roll among the trees.  
    The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings
    A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings.
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