Robert Graves

“ With a body not its mate, where thought is pure?”
Bau. “Are children bonds of love? But even children
Grow up too soon as women and as men,
And in the growing find their own love private,
Meet parent-love with new suspicious hate. ”

“ May preach these nightmare apparitions down, 50
These blundering, perfumed noises come to tell
No more than a priest-instructed folk knows well.
Out, meddlesome Imps, whatever Powers you be,
Break not true prayer between my God and me. ”

“ It giddies all to think;
Then kiss, girl, kiss!
Or drink, fellow, drink!
{17} THE LANDS OF WHIPPERGINNY
(“Heaven or Hell or the Lands of Whipperginny.”—Nashe’s Jack Wilton.)
Come closer yet, sweet honeysuckle, my coney, O my Jinny,
With a low sun gilding the bloom of the wood.
Be this Heaven, be it Hell, or the Lands of Whipperginny,
It lies in a fairy lustre, it savours most good.
Then stern proud psalms from the chapel on the moors
Waver in the night wind, their firm rhythm broken,
Lugubriously twisted to a howling of whores
Or lent an airy glory too strange to be spoken. ”

“ Scowls at the Manor House magnolia tree
That year by year within its thoughtless powers
Yields flowers and leaves and flowers and leaves and flowers,
While the Magnolia shudders as in fear,
“Figurez-vous! two sackfuls every year!” ”

“ Twelve lakes at least, woods, rivers, moors,
And half a county’s out-of-doors:
Trembling beneath a wind-flower’s shield
In this remote and rocky field.
But why should man in God’s Name stress
The dewdrop’s inconspicuousness
When to lakes, woods, the estuary,
Hebog and Snowdon, sky and sea,
This dewdrop falling from its leaf
Can spread amazement near to grief,
As it were a world distinct in mould
Lost with its beauty ages old?
{72} A VALENTINE
The hunter to the husbandman
Pays tribute since our love began,
And to love-loyalty dedicates
The phantom kills he meditates. ”

“ True love is, that none shall say
It ever was, or ever flowers again.
{52} THE AVENGERS
Who grafted quince on Western may,
Sharon’s mild rose on Northern briar?
In loathing since that Gospel day
The two saps flame, the tree’s on fire.
The briar-rose weeps for injured right,
May sprouts up red to choke the quince.
With angry throb of equal spite
Our wood leaps maddened ever since.
Then mistletoe, of gods not least,
Kindler of warfare since the Flood,
Against green things of South and East
Voices the vengeance of our blood. ”

“ Serene and passionless like wooden men.
Neither believe those elegant essayists
Who reconstruct the princes’ conversation
From grotesque fabrics of their own vain brains.
I only know that East gave West a nod,
Asking him careless questions about trade;
West gave the latest rumours from the front,
Raising of sieges, plots and pillages.
He told a camp-fire yarn to amuse the soldiers
Whereat they all laughed emptily (East laughed too) . 60
He sang a few staves of the latest catch,
And pulling out his roll of rhymes, unfurled it,
Ballads and songs, measured by the yard-rule. ”

“ To cards we have recourse
When Time with cruelty runs,
To courtly Bridge for stress of love,
To Nap for noise of guns.
On fairy earth we tread,
No present problems vex
Where man’s four humours fade to suits,
With red and black for sex. ”

“ That of his froward spirit he has found riddance;
They hymn the Son of David.
Ox and Ass cloistered in stable,
Break bounds to-night and see what shall astound you,
A second Fall, a second death of Abel,
Wars renewed around you.
Cabals of great men against small men,
Mobs, murders, informations, the packed jury,
While Ignorance, the lubber prince of all men,
Glowers with old-time fury.
Excellent beasts, resign your speaking,
Tempted in man’s own choleric tongue to name him.
Hoof-and-horn vengeance have no thought of wreaking,
Let your dumb grief shame him. ”

“ The Pier Glass, a volume which followed Country Sentiment, similarly contains a few pieces continuing the mood of this year, the desire to escape from a painful war neurosis into an Arcadia of amatory fancy, but the prevailing mood of The Pier Glass is aggressive and disciplinary, under the stress of the same neurosis, rather than escapist. ”

“ West with a steady look and knowing him well,
For an instant let the heavy soldier-mask,
His best protection, a dull cast of face,
Light up with joy, and his eyes shoot out mirth. 90
West then knew East, checked, and misdealt the cards.
Nothing at all was said, on went the game.
But East bought from West’s bag of ballads, after,
Two sombre histories, and some songs for dancing.
Also distrust those allegorical
Painters who treating of this famous scene
Are used to splash the skies with lurching Cupids,
Goddesses with loose hair, and broad-cheeked Zephyrs ”

“ To those who demand unceasing emotional stress in poetry at whatever cost to the poet—I was one of these myself until recently—I have no apology to offer; but only this proverb from the Chinese, that the petulant{vi} protests of all the lords and ladies of the Imperial Court will weigh little with the whale when, recovering from his painful excretory condition, he need no longer supply the Guild of Honourable Perfumers with their accustomed weight of ambergris. ”

“ That West and East juggled across the cards,
So intricate, so exquisitely resolved
In polished antithetical periods{46}
That by comparison, as you must believe, 70
Solomon himself faced with the Queen of Sheba
And Bishop Such, preaching before the King,
Joined in one person would have seemed mere trash.
I give my testimony beyond refutal,
Nailing the lie for all who ask the facts. ”

“ But friend of S. Sassoon?
“A VEHICLE, TO WIT, A BICYCLE.” (Dedicated, without permission, to my friend P. C. Flowers)
“My front-lamp, constable? Why, man, the moon!
My rear-lamp? Shining there ten yards behind me,
Warm parlour lamplight of The Dish and Spoon!”
But for all my fancy talk, they would have fined me,
Had I not set a rather sly half-crown
Winking under the rays of my front lamp:
Goodwill towards men disturbed the official frown,
My rear-light beckoned through the evening’s damp. ”

“ And a loud throat bellows, that every creature hears,
{69}A sign to himself he must lay aside his fears. 30
It babbles an antique tongue, and threatening, pleads
Prompt sacrifice and a care for priestly needs,
Wholeness of heart, the putting away of wrath,
A generous measure for wine, for oil, for cloth,
A holding fast to the law that the Stones ordain,
And the rites of the Temple watch that ye maintain
Lest fire and ashes down from the mountain rain!
With expectance of goodly harvest and rain in Spring
To such as perform the will of the Jealous King. ”

“ The dewdrop carries in its eye ”

“ The poems in this volume cover a period of three years, beginning at the New Year of 1920, except for the rhymes “Henry and Mary,” “What did I dream?” and “Mirror, Mirror!” with parts of “An English Wood,” “The Bed Post” and of “Unicorn and the White Doe,” which are bankrupt stock of 1918, the year in which I was writing Country Sentiment. ”

“ Furtively, so that only West remarks it.
But such was not the fact; contrariwise,
When Proteus meets with Proteus, each annuls 30
The variability of the other’s mind.{45}
Single they stand, casting their mutable cloaks.
So for this present chance, I take my oath
That leaning across and watching the cards close
I caught no hint of prestidigitation. ”

“ They loathe to gaze upon the sun?
{15} RICHARD ROE AND JOHN DOE
Richard Roe wished himself Solomon
Made cuckold, you should know, by one John Doe;
Solomon’s neck was firm enough to bear
Some score of antlers more than Roe could wear.
Richard Roe wished himself Alexander,
Being robbed of house and land by the same hand ”