Robert Graves Quotes

She in left hand bears a leafy quince; When with her right she crooks a finger, smiling, How may the King hold back? Royally then he barters life for love.

Water to water, ark again to ark, From woman back to woman: So each new victim treads unfalteringly The never altered circuit of his fate, Bringing twelve peers as witness Both to this starry rise and starry fall.

There is one story and one story only That will prove worth your telling, Whether as learned bard or gifted child; To it all lines or lesser guards belong That startle with their shining Such common stories as they stray into.

Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.

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.

What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags But an infection of the common sky That sagged ominously upon the earth.

Entrance 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.

Sigh then, or frown, but leave (as in despair) Motive and end and moral in the air; Nice contradiction between fact and fact Will make the whole read human and exact.

His wiles were witty and his fame far known, Every king's daughter sought him for her own, Yet he was nothing to be won or lost. All lands to him were Ithaca: love-tossed He loathed the fraud, yet would not bed alone.

One, two and many: flesh had made him blind, Flesh had one pleasure only in the act, Flesh set one purpose only in the mind — Triumph of flesh and afterwards to find Still those same terrors wherewith flesh was racked.

They multiplied into the Sirens' throng, Forewarned by fear of whom he stood bound fast Hand and foot helpless to the vessel's mast, Yet would not stop his ears: daring their song He groaned and sweated till that shore was past.

To the much-tossed Ulysses, never done With woman whether gowned as wife or whore, Penelope and Circe seemed as one: She like a whore made his lewd fancies run, And wifely she a hero to him bore.

Down, wanton, down! Have you no shame That at the whisper of Love’s name, Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise Your angry head and stand at gaze?

Children, if you dare to think Of the greatness, rareness, muchness, Fewness of this precious only Endless world in which you say You live, you think of things like this: Blocks of slate enclosing dappled Red and green, enclosing tawny Yellow nets, enclosing white And black acres of dominoes, Where a neat brown paper parcel Tempts you to untie the string.

Be warm, enjoy the season, lift your head, Exquisite in the pulse of tainted blood, That shivering glory not to be despised. Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark — a shining space With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.