Robert Graves: Call It A Good Marriage

Call it a good marriage -

For no one ever questioned

Her warmth, his masculinity,

Their interlocking views;

Except one stray graphologist

Who frowned in speculation

At her h's and her s's,

His p's and w's.

Though few would still subscribe

To the monogamic axiom

That strife below the hip-bones

Need not estrange the heart,

Call it a good marriage:

More drew those two together,

Despite a lack of children,

Than pulled them apart.

Call it a good marriage:

They never fought in public,

They acted circumspectly

And faced the world with pride;

Thus the hazards of their love-bed

Were none of our damned business -

Till as jurymen we sat on

Two deaths by suicide.

Robert Graves: Troublesome Fame

To be born famous, as your father’s son,
Is a fate troublesome enough unless,
Like Philip’s Alexander of Macedon,
You can outdo him by superb excess
Of greed and profligacy and wantonness.

To become famous, as a wonder child,
Brings no less trouble, with whatever art
You toyed precociously, for Fame had smiled
Malevolence at your birth.... Only Mozart
Played on, still smiling from his placid heart.

To become famous while a raw young man
And lead Fame by the nose to a bitter end,
As Caesar’s nephew did, Octavian,
Styling himself Augustus, is to pretend
Peace in the torments that such laurels lend.

To become famous in your middle years
For merit not unblessed by accident—
Encountering catcalls, missiles jeers and sneers
From half your uncontrollable parliament—
Is no bad fate, to a good sportsman sent.

But Fame attendant on extreme old age
Falls best. What envious youth cares to compete
With a lean sage hauled painfully upstage—
Bowing, gasping, shuffling his frozen feet—
A ribboned hearse parked plainly down the street?

Robert Graves: Symptoms of Love

Love is a 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?

Robert Graves: A Slice Of Wedding Cake

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls
Married impossible men?
Simple self-sacrifice may be ruled out,
And missionary endeavour, nine times out of ten.

Repeat 'impossible men': not merely rustic,
Foul-tempered or depraved
(Dramatic foils chosen to show the world
How well women behave, and always have behaved).

Impossible men: idle, illiterate,
Self-pitying, dirty, sly,
For whose appearance even in City parks
Excuses must be made to casual passers-by.

Has God's supply of tolerable husbands
Fallen, in fact, so low?
Or do I always over-value woman
At the expense of man?
Do I?
It might be so.

Robert Graves: Love Without Hope

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher
Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter,
So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly
Singing about her head as she rode by.

Robert Graves: In Broken Images

He is quick, thinking in clear images;
I am slow, thinking in broken images.

He becomes dull, trusting to his clear images;
I become sharp, mistrusting my broken images.

Trusting his images, he assumes their relevance;
Mistrusting my images, I question their relevance.

Assuming their relevance, he assumes the fact;

Questioning their relevance, I question their fact.

When the fact fails him, he questions his senses;
when the fact fails me, I approve my senses.

He continues quick and dull in his clear images;
I continue slow and sharp in my broken images.

He in a new confusion of his understanding;
I in a new understanding of my confusion.