“A Child’s Nightmare" (A Poem)

Slightly reminiscent of Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” Robert Graves’ “A Child’s Nightmare” involves the narrator being visited by a symbol of death in the form of an animal that utters the same monotone word. While Poe’s poem explores loss and mourning, Graves’ examines the horrors of war and the impending death faced by soldiers. Written in 1917, the poem grapples with the horrors of World War I which, by this point, had made themselves evident to the entire globe: the mud and blood of the trenches, the perniciousness of weaponized machinery, and the disillusionment of the youth sent into battle.[1] In fact, Graves’ poem was just one of many literary works which commented on the conflict’s trauma, with Rebecca West’s Return of the Solider (1918) being among the first to explore the shell shock of returning servicemen.[2] Unlike the poem’s narrator, though, Graves survived the war, despite being accidentally reported dead in 1916.[3]

Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, queer,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, “Cat!… Cat!… Cat!…”

That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there’s Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, “Cat!… Cat!… Cat!…”

He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, “Cat!… Cat!… Cat!…”

Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
“Cat!… Cat!… Cat!… Cat!…” he said, “Cat!… Cat!…”

When I’m shot through heart and head,
And there’s no choice but to die,
The last word I’ll hear, no doubt,
Won’t be “Charge!” or “Bomb them out!”
Nor the stretcher-bearer’s cry,
“Let that body be, he’s dead!”
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, “Cat!… Cat!… Cat!”[4]

Works Referenced

Beiriger, Eugene Edward. World War I: A Historical Exploration of Literature. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2018.

Graves, Robert. “A Child’s Nightmare.” Fairies and Fusiliers. London: William Heinemann, 1917. 61-62.

Morpurgo, Michael, ed. Only Remembered: Powerful Words and Pictures about the War That Changed Our World. London: Corgi Books, 2014.

Wilson, Jean Moorcroft. Robert Graves: From Great War Poet to Good-bye to All That (1895-1929). London: Bloomsbury Continuum, 2018.
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[1] Morpurgo, 269.
[2] Beiriger, 185.
[3] Wilson, 4.
[4] Graves, 61-62.