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
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.
Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
With eager dragon-eyes;
The difference between you and her (whom I to you did once prefer) Is clear enough to settle: She like a diamond shone, but you Shine like an early drop of dew Poised on a red rose petal. The dew-drop carries in its eye Mountain and forest, sea and sky, With every change of weather; Contrariwise, a diamond splits The prospect into idle bits That none can piece together.
I revise the manuscript till I can't read it any longer, then I get somebody to type it. Then I revise the typing. Then it's retyped again. Then there's a third typing, which is the final one. Nothing should then remain that offends the eye.
War was return of earth to ugly earth, War was foundering of sublimities, Extinction of each happy art and faith By which the world had still kept head in air, Protesting logic or protesting love, Until the unendurable moment struck - The inward scre
Bullfight critics row on row crowd the enormous plaza de toros, but only one is there who knows, and he's the one who fights the bull.
No escape, / No such thing; to dream of new dimensions, / Cheating checkmate by painting the king's robe / So that he slides like a queen.
One smile relieves a heart that grievesthough deadly sad it be,and one hard look Can close the book that lovers love to see.
When the days of rejoicing are over,/ When the flags are stowed safely away,/ They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars'/ And another wild Armistice day.
Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls / Married impossible men?
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell uponThe trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
They carry / Time looped so river-wise about their house / There's no way in by history's road / To name or number them.
What we now call ''finance'' is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.