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
A remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he is really very good in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
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.
The decline of true taste for food is the beginning of a decline in a national culture as a whole. When people have lost their authentic personal taste, they lose their personality and become the instruments of other people's wills.
You mean that people who continue virtuous in an old-fashioned way must inevitably suffer in times like these?
I do not love the Sabbath, The soapsuds and the starch, The troops of solemn people Who to Salvation march. I take my book, I take my stick On the Sabbath day, In woody nooks and valleys I hide myself away. To ponder there in quiet God's Universal Plan, Resolved that church and Sabbath Were never made for man.
I was thinking, "So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I'll be able to make people read my books now.
They carry / Time looped so river-wise about their house / There's no way in by history's road / To name or number them.
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
Across two counties he can hear / And catch your words before you speak. / The woodlouse or the maggot's weak / Clamour rings in his sad ear, / And noise so slight it would surpass / Credence.
You reading over my shoulder, peering beneath / My writing arm.
One smile relieves a heart that grievesthough deadly sad it be,and one hard look Can close the book that lovers love to see.
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.
As you are woman, so be lovely:As you are lovely, so be various,Merciful as constant, constant as various,So be mine, as I yours for ever.