The Complete Poems

by Robert Graves

  Baffled, aghast with hate, mouse-poor,

  He glares and clatters the brass knob.

  Through his heart it slid sure:

  He bowed, he fell with never a sob.

  Again she stabbed, now sits secure,

  Praying (as she has always prayed)

  For great Victoria’s Majesty,

  Droning prayer for God’s aid

  To succour long dead Royalty,

  The Consort Prince, Queen Adelaide….

  She falls asleep, the clocks chime two;

  Old Becker sinks to unquiet rest.

  Loud and sad the cats mew.

  Lead weighs cruelly on his breast,

  His bones are tufted with mildew.

  Whipperginny

  (1923)

  WHIPPERGINNY

  (‘A card game, obsolete.’ – Standard Dictionary.)

  To cards we have recourse

  When Time with cruelty runs,

  To courtly Bridge for stress of love,

  To Nap for noise of guns.

  On fairy earth we tread,

  No present problems vex

  Where man’s four humours fade to suits,

  With red and black for sex.

  Where phantom gains accrue

  By tricks instead of cash,

  Where pasteboard federacies of Powers

  In battles-royal clash.

  Then read the antique word

  That hangs above this page

  As type of mirth-abstracted joy,

  Calm terror, noiseless rage,

  A realm of ideal thought,

  Obscured by veils of Time,

  Cipher remote enough to stand

  As namesake for my rhyme,

  A game to play apart

  When all but crushed with care;

  Let right and left, your jealous hands,

  The lists of love prepare.

  THE BEDPOST

  Sleepy Betsy from her pillow

  Sees the post and ball

  Of her sister’s wooden bedstead

  Shadowed on the wall.

  Now this grave young warrior standing

  With uncovered head

  Tells her stories of old battle

  As she lies in bed:

  How the Emperor and the Farmer,

  Fighting knee to knee,

  Broke their swords but whirled their scabbards

  Till they gained the sea.

  How the ruler of that shore

  Foully broke his oath,

  Gave them beds in his sea cave,

  Then stabbed them both.

  How the daughters of the Emperor,

  Diving boldly through,

  Caught and killed their father’s murderer

  Old Cro-bar-cru.

  How the Farmer’s sturdy sons

  Fought the Giant Gog,

  Threw him into Stony Cataract

  In the land of Og.

  Will and Abel were their names,

  Though they went by others:

  He could tell ten thousand stories

  Of these lusty brothers.

  How the Emperor’s elder daughter

  Fell in love with Will

  And went with him to the Court of Venus

  Over Hoo Hill;

  How Gog’s wife encountered Abel

  Whom she hated most,

  Stole away his arms and helmet,

  Turned him to a post.

  As a post he shall stay rooted

  For yet many years,

  Until a maiden shall release him

  With pitying tears.

  But Betsy likes the bloodier stories,

  Clang and clash of fight,

  And Abel wanes with the spent candle –

  ‘sweetheart, good-night!’

  A LOVER SINCE CHILDHOOD

  Tangled in thought am I,

  Stumble in speech do I?

  Do I blunder and blush for the reason why?

  Wander aloof do I,

  Lean over gates and sigh,

  Making friends with the bee and the butterfly?

  If thus and thus I do,

  Dazed by the thought of you,

  Walking my sorrowful way in the early dew,

  My heart cut through and through

  In this despair for you,

  Starved for a word or look will my hope renew;

  Give then a thought for me

  Walking so miserably,

  Wanting relief in the friendship of flower or tree;

  Do but remember, we

  Once could in love agree,

  Swallow your pride, let us be as we used to be.

  SONG OF CONTRARIETY

  Far away is close at hand,

  Close joined is far away,

  Love shall come at your command

  Yet will not stay.

  At summons of your dream-despair

  She might not disobey,

  But slid close down beside you there,

  And complaisant lay.

  Yet now her flesh and blood consent

  In the hours of day,

  Joy and passion both are spent,

  Twining clean away.

  Is the person empty air,

  Is the spectre clay,

  That love, lent substance by despair,

  Wanes and leaves you lonely there

  On the bridal day?

  LOVE IN BARRENNESS

  Below the ridge a raven flew

  And we heard the lost curlew

  Mourning out of sight below.

  Mountain tops were touched with snow;

  Even the long dividing plain

  Showed no wealth of sheep or grain,

  But fields of boulders lay like corn

  And raven’s croak was shepherd’s horn

  Where slow cloud-shadow strayed across

  A pasture of thin heath and moss.

  The North Wind rose: I saw him press

  With lusty force against your dress,

  Moulding your body’s inward grace

  And streaming off from your set face;

  So now no longer flesh and blood

  But poised in marble flight you stood.

  O wingless Victory, loved of men,

  Who could withstand your beauty then?

  SONG IN WINTER

  The broken spray left hanging

  Can hold his dead leaf longer

  Into your glum November

  Than this live twig tossed shivering

  By your East Wind anger.

  Unrepentant, hoping Spring,

  Flowery hoods of glory hoping,

  Carelessly I sing,

  With envy none for the broken spray

  When the Spring comes, fallen away.

  UNICORN AND THE WHITE DOE

  Unicorn with burning heart

  Breath of love has drawn

  On his desolate peak apart

  At rumour of dawn,

  Has trumpeted his pride

  These long years mute,

  Tossed his horn from side to side,

  Lunged with his foot.

  Like a storm of sand has run

  Breaking his own boundaries,

  Gone in hiding from the sun

  Under camphor trees.

  Straight was the course he took

  Across the plain, but here with briar

  And mire the tangled alleys crook,

  Baulking desire.

  A shoulder glistened white –

  The bough still shakes –

  A white doe darted out of sight

  Through the forest brakes.

  Tall and close the camphors grow

  The grass grows thick –

  Where you are I do not know,

  You fly so quick.

  Where have you fled from me?

  I pursue, you fade,

  I hunt, you hide from me

  In the chequered glade.

  Often from my hot lair

  I would watch you drink,

&n
bsp; A mirage of tremulous air,

  At the pool’s brink.

  Vultures, rocking high in air

  By the western gate,

  Warned me with discordant cry

  You are even such as I:

  You have no mate.

  SONG: SULLEN MOODS

  Love, never count your labour lost

  Though I turn sullen or retired

  Even at your side; my thought is crossed

  With fancies by no evil fired.

  And when I answer you, some days,

  Vaguely and wildly, never fear

  That my love walks forbidden ways,

  Snapping the ties that hold it here.

  If I speak gruffly, this mood is

  Mere indignation at my own

  Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties:

  I forget the gentler tone.

  You, now that you have come to be

  My one beginning, prime and end,

  I count at last as wholly me,

  Lover no longer nor yet friend.

  Help me to see you as before

  When overwhelmed and dead, almost,

  I stumbled on that secret door

  Which saves the live man from the ghost.

  Be once again the distant light,

  Promise of glory, not yet known

  In full perfection – wasted quite

  When on my imperfection thrown.

  ANGRY SAMSON

  Are they blind, the lords of Gaza

  In their strong towers,

  Who declare Samson pillow-smothered

  And stripped of his powers?

  O stolid Philistines,

  Stare now in amaze

  At my foxes running in your cornfields

  With their tails ablaze,

  At swung jaw-bone, at bees swarming

  In the stark lion’s hide,

  At these, the gates of well-walled Gaza

  A-clank to my stride.

  CHILDREN OF DARKNESS

  We spurred our parents to the kiss,

  Though doubtfully they shrank from this –

  Day had no courage to pursue

  What lusty dark alone might do:

  Then were we joined from their caress

  In heat of midnight, one from two.

  This night-seed knew no discontent:

  In certitude our changings went.

  Though there were veils about his face,

  With forethought, even in that pent place,

  Down toward the light his way we bent

  To kingdoms of more ample space.

  Is Day prime error, that regret

  For Darkness roars unstifled yet?

  That in this freedom, by faith won,

  Only acts of doubt are done?

  That unveiled eyes with tears are wet:

  We loathe to gaze upon the sun?

  RICHARD ROE AND JOHN DOE

  Richard Roe wished himself Solomon,

  Made cuckold, you should know, by one John Doe:

  Solomon’s neck was firm enough to bear

  Some score of antlers more than Roe could wear.

  Richard Roe wished himself Alexander,

  Being robbed of house and land by the same hand:

  Ten thousand acres or a principal town

  Would have cost Alexander scarce a frown.

  Richard Roe wished himself Job the prophet,

  Sunk past reclaim in stinking rags and shame –

  However ill Job’s plight, his own was worse:

  He knew no God to call on or to curse.

  He wished himself Job, Solomon, Alexander,

  For patience, wisdom, power to overthrow

  Misfortune; but with spirit so unmanned

  That most of all he wished himself John Doe.

  THE DIALECTICIANS

  I heard two poets

  Down by the sea,

  Discussing a burdensome

  Relativity.

  Thought has a bias,

  Direction a bend,

  Space its inhibitions,

  Time a dead end.

  Is whiteness white?

  O then, call it black:

  Farthest from the truth

  Is yet half-way back.

  Effect ordains cause,

  Head swallowing the tail;

  Does whale engulf sprat,

  Or sprat assume whale?

  Contentions weary,

  It giddies to think;

  Then swim, poet, swim!

  Or drink, poet, drink!

  THE LAND OF WHIPPERGINNY

  Come closer yet, my honeysuckle, my sweetheart Jinny:

  A low sun is gilding the bloom of the wood –

  Is it Heaven, or Hell, or the Land of Whipperginny

  That holds this fairy lustre, not understood?

  For stern proud psalms from the chapel on the moors

  Waver in the night wind, their firm rhythm broken,

  Lugubriously twisted to a howling of whores

  Or lent an airy glory too strange to be spoken.

  Soon the risen Moon will peer down with pity,

  Drawing us in secret by an ivory gate

  To the fruit-plats and fountains of her silver city

  Where lovers need not argue the tokens of fate.

  ‘THE GENERAL ELIOTT’

  He fell in victory’s fierce pursuit,

  Holed through and through with shot;

  A sabre sweep had hacked him deep

  ’Twixt neck and shoulder-knot.

  The potman cannot well recall,

  The ostler never knew,

  Whether that day was Malplaquet,

  The Boyne, or Waterloo.

  But there he hangs, a tavern sign,

  With foolish bold regard

  For cock and hen and loitering men

  And wagons down the yard.

  Raised high above the hayseed world

  He smokes his china pipe;

  And now surveys the orchard ways,

  The damsons clustering ripe –

  Stares at the churchyard slabs beyond,

  Where country neighbours lie:

  Their brief renown set lowly down,

  But his invades the sky.

  He grips a tankard of brown ale

  That spills a generous foam:

  Often he drinks, they say, and winks

  At drunk men lurching home.

  No upstart hero may usurp

  That honoured swinging seat;

  His seasons pass with pipe and glass

  Until the tale’s complete –

  And paint shall keep his buttons bright

  Though all the world’s forgot

  Whether he died for England’s pride

  By battle or by pot.

  A FIGHT TO THE DEATH

  Two blind old men in a blind corridor

  Fought to the death, by sense of sound or touch.

  Doom flailed unseen, an iron hook-hand tore

  Flesh from the enemy’s ribs who swung the crutch.

  One gasped, ‘she looked on me and smiled, I say’,

  So life was battered out, for yea or nay.

  MERMAID, DRAGON, FIEND

  In my childhood rumours ran

  Of a world beyond our door –

  Terrors to the life of man

  That the highroad held in store.

  Of the mermaids’ doleful game

  In deep water I heard tell,

  Of lofty dragons belching flame,

  Of the hornèd fiend of Hell.

  Tales like these were too absurd

  For my laughter-loving ear:

  Soon I mocked at all I heard,

  Though with cause indeed for fear.

  Now I know the mermaid kin

  I find them bound by natural laws:

  They have neither tail nor fin,

  But are deadlier for that cause.

  Dragons have no darting tongues,

  Teeth saw-edged, nor rattling scales;

>   No fire issues from their lungs,

  No black poison from their tails:

  For they are creatures of dark air,

  Unsubstantial tossing forms,

  Thunderclaps of man’s despair

  In mid-whirl of mental storms.

  And there’s a true and only fiend

  Worse than prophets prophesy,

  Whose full powers to hurt are screened

  Lest the race of man should die.

  Ever in vain will courage plot

  The dragon’s death, in coat of proof;

  Or love abjure the mermaid grot;

  Or faith denounce the cloven hoof.

  Mermaids will not be denied

  The last bubbles of our shame,

  The dragon flaunts an unpierced hide,

  The true fiend governs in God’s name.

  CHRISTMAS EVE

  On Christmas Eve the brute Creation

  Lift up their heads and speak with human voices;

  The Ox roars out his song of jubilation

  And the Ass rejoices.

  They dance for mirth in simple credence

  That man from devildom this day was savèd,

  That of his froward spirit he has found riddance:

  They hymn the Son of David.

  Ox and Ass cloistered in stable,

  Break bounds to-night and see what shall astound you,

  A second Fall, a second death of Abel,

  Wars renewed around you.

  Cabals of great men against small men,

  Mobs, murders, informations, the packed jury,

  While Ignorance, the lubber prince of all men,

  Glowers with old-time fury.

  Excellent beasts, resign your speaking,

  Tempted in man’s own choleric tongue to name him,

  Hoof-and-horn vengeance have no thought of wreaking,

  Let your dumb grief shame him.

  THE SNAKE AND THE BULL

  Snake Bull, my namesake, man of wrath,

  By no expense of knives or cloth,

  Only by work of muttered charms

  Could draw all woman to his arms;

  None whom he summoned might resist

  Nor none recall whom once he kissed

  And loosed them from his kiss, by whom

  This mother-shame had come.

  The power of his compelling flame

  Was bound in virtue of our name,

  But when in secret he taught me

  Like him a thief of love to be,

  For half his secret I had found

  And half explored the wizard ground

  Of words, and when giving consent

  Out at his heels I went,

  Then Fessé, jungle-god, whose shape