Lovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him.
ROBERT GRAVESLovers to-day and for all time Preserve the meaning of my rhyme: Love is not kindly nor yet grim But does to you as you to him.
ROBERT GRAVESThis seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet’s destiny is to love.
ROBERT GRAVESThe function of poetry is religious invocation of the muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.
ROBERT GRAVESWhat we now call “finance” is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
ROBERT GRAVESOne smile relieves a heart that grieves.
ROBERT GRAVESProse books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
ROBERT GRAVESHate is a fear, and fear is rot That cankers root and fruit alike, Fight cleanly then, hate not, fear not, Strike with no madness when you strike.
ROBERT GRAVESFor I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.
ROBERT GRAVESThe butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.
ROBERT GRAVESEntrance 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.
ROBERT GRAVESLove at first sight’some say misnaming Discovery of twinned helplessness Against the huge tug of procreation. But friendship at first sight? This also Catches fiercely at the surprised heart So that the cheek blanches then blushes.
ROBERT GRAVESAny honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
ROBERT GRAVESPatriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.
ROBERT GRAVESKaisers and Czars will strut the stage Once more with pomp and greed and rage; Courtly ministers will stop At home and fight to the last drop; By the million men will die In some new horrible agony.
ROBERT GRAVESTruth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
ROBERT GRAVESThe gift of independence once granted cannot be lightly taken away again.
ROBERT GRAVES