Robert Graves
Robert Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves was an English poet, novelist, critic and classicist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works. Graves's poems—together with his translations and innovative analysis and interpretations of the Greek myths; his memoir of his early life, including his role in the First World War, Good-Bye to All That; and his speculative study of poetic inspiration, The White Goddess—have never been out of print...
NationalityIrish
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth24 July 1895
CountryIreland
Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door.
What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
I don't really feel my poems are mine at all. I didn't create them out of nothing. I owe them to my relations with other people.
There's a cool web of language winds us in, Retreat from too much joy or too much fear: We grow sea-green at last and coldly die In brininess and volubility.
Entrance and exit wounds are silvered clean, The track aches only when the rain reminds. The one-legged man forgets his leg of wood, The one-armed man his jointed wooden arm. The blinded man sees with his ears and hands As much or more than once with both his eyes.
Where nature with accustomed round Sweeps and garnishes the ground With kindly beauty, warm or cold Alternate seasons never old: Heathen, how furiously you rage, Cursing this blood and brimstone age, How furiously against your will You kill and kill again, and kill: All thought of peace behind you cast, Till like small boys with fear aghast, Each cries for God to understand, 'I could not help it, it was my hand.
Children born of fairy stock Never need for shirt or frock, Never want for food or fire, Always get their heart's desire...
This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.
Since the age of 15 poetry has been my ruling passion and I have never intentionally undertaken any task or formed any relationship that seemed inconsistent with poetic principles; which has sometimes won me the reputation of an eccentric.
No poem is worth anything unless it starts from a poetic trance, out of which you can be wakened by interruption as from a dream. In fact, it is the same thing.
Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
No honest theologian therefore can deny that his acceptance of Jesus as Christ logically binds every Christian to a belief in reincarnation - in Elias case (who was later John the Baptist) at least.
We once discussed which were the cleanest troops in the trenches, taken by nationalities. We agreed on a descending-order like this: English and German Protestants; Northern Irish, Welsh and Canadians; Irish and German Catholics; Scots; Mohammedan Indians; Algerians; Portugese; Belgians; French. We put the Belgians and French there for spite; they could not have been dirtier than the Algerians and the Portugese.
Well, we've been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.