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"The Blue Fly" Five summer days, five summer nights, The ignorant, loutish, giddy blue-fly Hung without motion on the cling peach Humming occasional… - Robert Graves
"The Blue Fly"
Five summer days, five summer nights,
The ignorant, loutish, giddy blue-fly
Hung without motion on the cling peach
Humming occasionally ‘O my love, my fair one!’
As in the canticles.
Magnified one thousand times, the insect
Looks farcically human; laugh if you will!
Bald head, stage fairy wings, blear eyes,
A caved-in chest, hairy black mandibles,
Long spindly thighs.
The crime was detected on the sixth day.
What then could be said or done? By anyone?
It would have been vindictive, mean, and what-not,
To swat that fly for being a blue-fly,
For debauch of a peach.
Is it fair either, to bring a microscope
To bear on the case, even in search of truth?
Nature, doubtless, has some compelling cause
To glut the carriers of her epidemics -
Nor did the peach complain.
English
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About Robert Graves
Robert Ranke Graves (24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985) was a prolific English poet, scholar and novelist. He is most famous for his autobiographical work Goodbye to All That, and works on classical themes and mythology, such as I, Claudius, The Greek Myths and The White Goddess. His father was Alfred Perceval Graves.
Biography information from Wikiquote
Also Known As
Birth Name:
Robert von Ranke Graves
Native Name:
Robert Ranke Graves
Alternative Names:
Robert von Ranke-Graves
•
Robert Von Ranke-Graves
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Additional quotes by Robert Graves
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.
Bertrand Russell, too old for military service, but an ardent pacifist (a rare combination), turned sharply on me one afternoon and asked: ‘Tell me, if a company of your men were brought along to break a strike of munition makers, and the munition makers refused to go back to work, would you order the men to fire?’
‘Yes, if everything else failed. It would be no worse than shooting Germans, really.’
He asked in surprise: ‘Would your men obey you?’
‘They loathe munition-workers, and would be only too glad of a chance to shoot a few. They think that they’re all skrim-shankers.’
‘But they realize that the war’s all wicked nonsense?’
‘Yes, as well as I do.’
He could not understand my attitude.
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