 Poetry: March 27, 2019 Issue [#9460] |
This week: Robert Graves Edited by: Stormy Lady  
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The Cottage by Robert Graves
Here in turn succeed and rule
Carter, smith, and village fool,
Then again the place is known
As tavern, shop, and Sunday-school;
Now somehow it’s come to me
To light the fire and hold the key,
Here in Heaven to reign alone.
All the walls are white with lime,
Big blue periwinkles climb
And kiss the crumbling window-sill;
Snug inside I sit and rhyme,
Planning, poem, book, or fable,
At my darling beech-wood table
Fresh with bluebells from the hill.
Through the window I can see
Rooks above the cherry-tree,
Sparrows in the violet bed,
Bramble-bush and bumble-bee,
And old red bracken smoulders still
Among boulders on the hill,
Far too bright to seem quite dead.
But old Death, who can’t forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.
Look, he’s got a great new net,
And when my fighting starts afresh
Stouter cord and smaller mesh
Won’t be cheated as before.
Nor can kindliness of Spring,
Flowers that smile nor birds that sing,
Bumble-bee nor butterfly,
Nor grassy hill nor anything
Of magic keep me safe to rhyme
In this Heaven beyond my time.
No! for Death is waiting by.
On July 24, 1895, Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke Grave welcomed son Robert Graves into their family. They lived in Wimbledon, close to London. Graves was one of ten children. Graves was greatly influenced by both his mother beliefs and by his father’s Celtic poetry. The last thing on Graves mind as a young man was poetry; he was adventurous and loved the outdoors. His love for poetry slowly grew over the years. He won a scholarship to study at St. John’s College, Oxford, but enlisted in the war instead. While enlisted he published his first collection of poetry, "Over the Brazier," in 1916. Graves added two more volumes while still enlisted. In 1918 he was severely wounded which sent him home.
In January 1918, Graves married Nancy Nicholson, the couple had four children together. Graves and his family moved to Oxford where he took a position at St. John’s College. In 1927, Graves and Nancy separated ending their nine year marriage for good. Graves and his new love, Laura Riding, moved to Majorca and he continued his writing. The two wrote a few collaborations together and cofounded Seizin Press in 1928. In 1929 Graves published Goodbye to All That, it was an autobiography about his life and experiences while at war.
In the early 1930's his poetry became more spiritually cathartic. Graves claimed he only wrote novels to pay the bills. It was through these novels that he was recognized as a writer. He published the historical novel "I, Claudius," in 1934 and its sequel, "Claudius the God and His Wife Messalina." These novels would be the inspiration for a BBC television show that aired in the 70's.
In 1936, the start of the Spanish War, Graves and Riding fled Majorca, to settle in America. Only a few years later, in 1939, Laura Riding left Graves for the writer Schuyler Jackson. In 1940 Graves began a relationship with Beryl Hodge that was to last until his death. It was in the 1940s, after his break up with Riding, that Graves came up with his personal mythology of the White Goddess. Inspired by late nineteenth-century studies of matriarchal societies and goddess cults, this mythology was found in his later work.
At the end of World War II, Graves returned to Majorca with Hodge. Graves had gained international reputation as a poet, novelist, literary scholar, and translator by the 1950's. In 1968 he received the Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry. During his lifetime he published more than 140 books, including fifty-five collections of poetry. Graves often reworked his, "Collected Poems," during his career. He wrote fifteen novels, ten translations, and forty works of nonfiction, autobiography, and literary essays. In 1961 Graves returned to England to serve as a professor of poetry at Oxford. Graves left there in 1966 to return to Majorca.
In the later years of Graves life, he was no longer productivily writing. Towards the end of his life he was silent and lost his own mind. Robert Graves died in Majorca in 1985, at the age of ninety.
The Caterpillar by Robert Graves
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A creeping, coloured caterpillar,
I gnaw the fresh green hawthorn spray,
I nibble it leaf by leaf away.
Down beneath grow dandelions,
Daisies, old-man’s-looking-glasses;
Rooks flap croaking across the lane.
I eat and swallow and eat again.
Here come raindrops helter-skelter;
I munch and nibble unregarding:
Hawthorn leaves are juicy and firm.
I’ll mind my business: I’m a good worm.
When I’m old, tired, melancholy,
I’ll build a leaf-green mausoleum
Close by, here on this lovely spray,
And die and dream the ages away.
Some say worms win resurrection,
With white wings beating flitter-flutter,
But wings or a sound sleep, why should I care?
Either way I’ll miss my share.
Under this loop of honeysuckle,
A hungry, hairy caterpillar,
I crawl on my high and swinging seat,
And eat, eat, eat—as one ought to eat.
The Frog and the Golden Ball by Robert Graves
She let her golden ball fall down the well
And begged a cold frog to retrieve it;
For which she kissed his ugly, gaping mouth -
Indeed, he could scarce believe it.
And seeing him transformed to his princely shape,
Who had been by hags enchanted,
She knew she could never love another man
Nor by any fate be daunted.
But what would her royal father and mother say?
They had promised her in marriage
To a cousin whose wide kingdom marched with theirs,
Who rode in a jeweled carriage.
'Our plight, dear heart, would appear past human hope
To all except you and me: to all
Who have never swum as a frog in a dark well
Or have lost a golden ball.'
'What then shall we do now?' she asked her lover.
He kissed her again, and said:
'Is magic of love less powerful at your Court
Than at this green well-head?'
Thank you all!
Stormy Lady
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"Halt!"
Horses come to a stop
with a "huff" and a "snort"
before the towering edifice.
Enchanted by melodious strains of Al-Khallool
floating out across the desert sands,
legion troopers fall into the web
of its mystic charms.
Ancient scrolls tell the tale,
scribbled in blood,
about the Sultan's opulent lifestyle,
manifested through succulent feasts
and intoxicating indulgences,
contrasted against
his brutal reign of terror,
until he abandoned his dominion
under threat of death
by the mighty jinn.
As years piled up,
that palace became a haven
for troubled souls
who sought solace
in their moonlit haunt.
Today, those legion troopers
contemplate the curse of neglect,
apparent in that mystic mirage
which the pulse of time
has brought to meet
eternity in all its glory.
Honorable mention:
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Good luck to all 
