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
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.
When a dream is born in you With a sudden clamorous pain, When you know the dream is true And lovely, with no flaw nor stain, O then, be careful, or with sudden clutch You'll hurt the delicate thing you prize so much.
Love is universal migraine, A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason. Symptoms of true love Are leanness, jealousy, Laggard dawns; Are omens and nightmares - Listening for a knock, Waiting for a sign: For a touch of her fingers In a darkened room, For a searching look. Take courage, lover! Could you endure such pain At any hand but hers?
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.
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.
To bring the dead to life / Is no great magic. / Few are wholly dead: / Blow on a dead man's embers / And a live flame will start.
A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
If there's no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.