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64477: Jonah

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posted on 2024-04-05, 12:52 authored by First World War Poetry Digital Archive Project Team

A purple whale
Proudly sweeps his tail
Towards Nineveh;
Glassy green
Surges between
A mile of roaring sea.
'O town of gold,
Of splendour multifold,
Lucre and lust,
Leviathan's eye
Can surely spy
Thy doom of death and dust.'
On curving sands
Vengeful Jonah stands.
'Yet forty days,
Then down, down,
Tumbles the town
In flaming ruin ablaze.'
With swift lament
Those Ninevites repent.
They cry in tears,
'Our hearts fail!
The whale, the whale!
Our sins prick us like spears.'
Jonah is vexed;
He cries, 'What next? what next?'
And shakes his fist.
'Stupid city,
The shame, the pity,
The glorious crash I've missed.'
Away goes Jonah grumbling,
Murmuring and mumbling;
Off ploughs the purple whale,
With disappointed tail.

History

Identifier

3432.txt

Creator

Graves, Robert (1895-1985)

Date

(1995, 1997, 1999)

Date Created

01/01/1997

Temporal Date

31/12/1999

Type

Poem

Rights

The Robert Graves Copyright Trust / Published in Graves, R. (1999) Complete Poems: Volumes 1 - 3. Eds. B. Graves and D. Ward. London: Penguin Books.

Repository Name

ProQuest

Publisher

The First World War Poetry Digital Archive

Usage metrics

    The Robert Graves Collection

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