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"Your eyes were frosted starlight,
Your heart fire and snow.
Who was it said, "I love you"?
Alice: Mother, let me go!"
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. A Frosty Night (l. 25-28). . .
Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, The. Philip Larkin, ed. (1973) Oxford University Press. |
"Her image was my ensign: snows melted,
Hedges sprouted, the moon tenderly shone,
The owls trilled with tongues of nightingale."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. A Love Story (l. 13-15). . .
Norton Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. M. H. Abrams, general ed. (5th ed., 1986) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"her image
Warped in the weather, turned beldamish.
Then back came winter on me at a bound,
The pallid sky heaved with a moon-quake."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. A Love Story (l. 17-20). . .
Norton Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. M. H. Abrams, general ed. (5th ed., 1986) W. W. Norton & Company. |
"Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. A Slice of Wedding Cake (l. 13-18). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. A Slice of Wedding Cake (l. 1-4). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love's name,
Or Beauty's, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?"
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist. Down, Wanton, Down! Collected Poems (1965). |
"The butterfly, a cabbage-white,
(His honest idiocy of flight)
Will never now, it is too late,
Master the art of flying straight,"
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. Flying Crooked (l. 1-4). . .
Oxford Book of Short Poems, The. P. J. Kavanagh and James Michie, eds. Oxford University Press. |
"Like man and wife who nightly keep
Inconsequent debate in sleep
As they dream side by side."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. Full Moon (l. 12-14). . .
New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"And love went by upon the wind
As though it had not been."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. Full Moon (l. 34-35).
NOBE. New Oxford Book of English Verse, The, 1250-1950. Helen Gardner, ed. (1972) Oxford University Press. |
"The difference between prose logic and poetic thought is simple. The logician uses words as a builder uses bricks, for the unemotional deadness of his academic prose; and is always coining newer, deader words with a natural preference for Greek formations. The poet avoids the entire vocabulary of logic unless for satiric purposes, and treats words as living creatures with a preference for those with long emotional histories dating from mediaeval times. Poetry at its purest is, indeed, a defiance of logic."
Robert Graves (1895-1985), British novelist, poet. "Genius," Difficult Questions, Easy Answers, Doubleday (1972). |
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Robert Graves
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