Country Sentiment

Name: Country Sentiment
Author: Robert Graves

by Robert Graves

Pages: about 9
Category: Literature & Fiction
Language: English
Reading time: 9 min at 250 wpm

Start readingThe whole book, as cards or one word at a time. 5 min at 450 wpm in Read mode.

From the opening

Nine of the clock, oh! Wake my lazy head! Your shoes of red morocco, Your silk bed-gown: Rouse, rouse, speck-eyed Mary In your high bed! A yawn, a smile, sleepy-starey, Mary climbs down. "Good-morning to my brothers, Good-day to the Sun, Halloo, halloo to the lily-white sheep That up the mountain run."
Good-night to the meadow, farewell to the nine o'clock Sun, "He loves me not, loves me, he loves me not" (O jealous one!) "He loves me, he loves me not, loves me"--O soft nights of June, A bird sang for love on the cherry-bough: up swam the Moon.
When I was not quite five years old I first saw the blue picture book, And Fraulein Spitzenburger told Stories that sent me hot and cold; I loathed it, yet I had to look: It was a German book.
I smiled at first, for she'd begun With a back-garden broad and green, And rabbits nibbling there: page one Turned; and the gardener fired his gun From the low hedge: he lay unseen Behind: oh, it was mean!
They're hurt, they can't escape, and so He stuffs them head-down in a sack, Not quite dead, wriggling in a row, And Fraulein laughed, "Ho, ho! Ho, ho!" And gave my middle a hard smack, I wish that I'd hit back.
Then when I cried she laughed again; On the next page was a dead boy Murdered by robbers in a lane; His clothes were red with a big stain Of blood, he held a broken toy, The poor, poor little boy!
I had to look: there was a town Burning where every one got caught, Then a fish pulled a nigger down Into the lake and made him drown, And a man killed his friend; they fought For money, Fraulein thought.
Old Fraulein laughed, a horrid noise. "Ho, ho!" Then she explained it all How robbers kill the little boys And torture them and break their toys. Robbers are always big and tall: I cried: I was so small.

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Country Sentiment

From the opening

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