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Best Famous Robert Graves Poems

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Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

A Childs Nightmare

 Through long nursery nights he stood
By my bed unwearying,
Loomed gigantic, formless, *****,
Purring in my haunted ear
That same hideous nightmare thing,
Talking, as he lapped my blood,
In a voice cruel and flat,
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

That one word was all he said,
That one word through all my sleep,
In monotonous mock despair.
Nonsense may be light as air,
But there's Nonsense that can keep
Horror bristling round the head,
When a voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

He had faded, he was gone
Years ago with Nursery Land,
When he leapt on me again
From the clank of a night train,
Overpowered me foot and head,
Lapped my blood, while on and on
The old voice cruel and flat
Says for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..."

Morphia drowsed, again I lay
In a crater by High Wood:
He was there with straddling legs,
Staring eyes as big as eggs,
Purring as he lapped my blood,
His black bulk darkening the day,
With a voice cruel and flat,
"Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!..." he said, "Cat! ... Cat!..."

When I'm shot through heart and head,
And there's no choice but to die,
The last word I'll hear, no doubt,
Won't be "Charge!" or "Bomb them out!"
Nor the stretcher-bearer's cry,
"Let that body be, he's dead!"
But a voice cruel and flat
Saying for ever, "Cat! ... Cat! ... Cat!"


Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Free Verse

 I now delight 
In spite 
Of the might 
And the right 
Of classic tradition, 
In writing 
And reciting 
Straight ahead, 
Without let or omission, 
Just any little rhyme
In any little time 
That runs in my head; 
Because, I’ve said, 
My rhymes no longer shall stand arrayed
Like Prussian soldiers on parade
That march, 
Stiff as starch, 
Foot to foot, 
Boot to boot, 
Blade to blade,
Button to button, 
Cheeks and chops and chins like mutton.
No! No! 
My rhymes must go 
Turn ’ee, twist ’ee,
Twinkling, frosty, 
Will-o’-the-wisp-like, misty; 
Rhymes I will make 
Like Keats and Blake 
And Christina Rossetti,
With run and ripple and shake. 
How pretty 
To take 
A merry little rhyme 
In a jolly little time
And poke it, 
And choke it, 
Change it, arrange it, 
Straight-lace it, deface it, 
Pleat it with pleats, 
Sheet it with sheets 
Of empty conceits, 
And chop and chew, 
And hack and hew, 
And weld it into a uniform stanza,
And evolve a neat, 
Complacent, complete, 
Academic extravaganza!
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Mermaid Dragon Fiend

 In my childhood rumors ran
 Of a world beyond our door—
Terrors to the life of man
 That the highroad held in store.

Of mermaids' doleful game
 In deep water I heard tell,
Of lofty dragons belching flame,
 Of the hornèd fiend of Hell.

Tales like these were too absurd
 For my laughter-loving ear:
Soon I mocked at all I heard,
 Though with cause indeed for fear.

Now I know the mermaid kin
 I find them bound by natural laws:
They have neither tail nor fin,
 But are deadlier for that cause.

Dragons have no darting tongues,
 Teeth saw-edged, nor rattling scales;
No fire issues from their lungs,
 No black poison from their tails:

For they are creatures of dark air,
 Unsubstantial tossing forms,
Thunderclaps of man's despair
 In mid-whirl of mental storms.

And there's a true and only fiend
 Worse than prophets prophesy,
Whose full powers to hurt are screened
 Lest the race of man should die.

Ever in vain will courage plot
 The dragon's death, in coat of proof;
Or love abjure the mermaid grot;
 Or faith denounce the cloven hoof.

Mermaids will not be denied
 The last bubbles of our shame,
The Dragon flaunts an unpierced hide,
 The true fiend governs in God's name.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

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.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Symptoms of Love

 Love is 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?


Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Marigolds

 With a fork drive Nature out, 
She will ever yet return; 
Hedge the flowerbed all about, 
Pull or stab or cut or burn, 
She will ever yet return. 

Look: the constant marigold 
Springs again from hidden roots. 
Baffled gardener, you behold 
New beginnings and new shoots 
Spring again from hidden roots.
Pull or stab or cut or burn, 
They will ever yet return. 

Gardener, cursing at the weed, 
Ere you curse it further, say: 
Who but you planted the seed
In my fertile heart, one day? 
Ere you curse me further, say! 
New beginnings and new shoots 
Spring again from hidden roots. 
Pull or stab or cut or burn, 
Love must ever yet return.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

The Bough of Nonsense

 AN IDYLL


Back from the Somme two Fusiliers 
Limped painfully home; the elder said, 
S. “Robert, I’ve lived three thousand years 
This Summer, and I’m nine parts dead.” 
R. “But if that’s truly so,” I cried, “quick, now,
Through these great oaks and see the famous bough 

”Where once a nonsense built her nest 
With skulls and flowers and all things *****, 
In an old boot, with patient breast 
Hatching three eggs; and the next year…”
S. “Foaled thirteen squamous young beneath, and rid 
Wales of drink, melancholy, and psalms, she did.” 

Said he, “Before this quaint mood fails, 
We’ll sit and weave a nonsense hymn,” 
R. “Hanging it up with monkey tails
In a deep grove all hushed and dim….” 
S. “To glorious yellow-bunched banana-trees,” 
R. “Planted in dreams by pious Portuguese,” 

S. “Which men are wise beyond their time, 
And worship nonsense, no one more.”
R. “Hard by, among old quince and lime, 
They’ve built a temple with no floor,” 
S. “And whosoever worships in that place, 
He disappears from sight and leaves no trace.” 

R. “Once the Galatians built a fane
To Sense: what duller God than that?” 
S. “But the first day of autumn rain 
The roof fell in and crushed them flat.” 
R. “Ay, for a roof of subtlest logic falls 
When nonsense is foundation for the walls.”

I tell him old Galatian tales; 
He caps them in quick Portuguese, 
While phantom creatures with green scales 
Scramble and roll among the trees. 
The hymn swells; on a bough above us sings
A row of bright pink birds, flapping their wings.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Lost Love

 His eyes are quickened so with grief, 
He can watch a grass or leaf 
Every instant grow; he can 
Clearly through a flint wall see, 
Or watch the startled spirit flee 
From the throat of a dead man. 
Across two counties he can hear 
And catch your words before you speak. 
The woodlouse or the maggot's weak 
Clamour rings in his sad ear, 
And noise so slight it would surpass 
Credence--drinking sound of grass, 
Worm talk, clashing jaws of moth 
Chumbling holes in cloth; 
The groan of ants who undertake 
Gigantic loads for honour's sake 
(Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin); 
Whir of spiders when they spin, 
And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs 
Of idle grubs and flies. 
This man is quickened so with grief, 
He wanders god-like or like thief 
Inside and out, below, above, 
Without relief seeking lost love.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

I Hardly Remember

 I hardly remember your voice, but the pain of you
floats in some remote current of my blood.
I carry you in my depths, trapped in the sludge
like one of those corpses the sea refuses to give up.

It was a spoiled remnant of the South. A beach
without fishing boats, where the sun was for sale.
A stretch of shore, now a jungle of lights and languages
that grudgingly offered, defeated, its obligation of sand.

The night of that day punished us at its whim.
I held you so close I could barely see you.
Autumn was brandishing guffaws and dancebands
and the sea tore at the pleasure-boats in a frenzy.

Your hand balanced, with its steady heat,
the wavering tepidness of alcohol. The gardens
came at me from far away through your skirt.
My high-tide mark rose to the level of your breasts.

Carpets, like tentacles, wriggling down to the strand,
attracted passers-by to the mouth of the clamor.
With lights and curtains, above the tedium
the bedrooms murmured in the grand hotels.

There are dark moments when our ballast gives out
from so much banging around. Moments, or centuries,
when the flesh revels in its nakedness and reels
to its own destruction, sucking the life from itself.

I groped around me, trying on your embrace,
but love was not where your embrace was.
I felt your hands stroking that physical ache
but a great nothing went before your hands.

I searched, down the length of your soulless surrender,
for a calm bay where I could cast a net,
yearning to hear a trace of the vendor's voice
still wet with the glimmer of the flapping minnows.

It was a spoiled remnant of the South. The aroma
of muscatel was tainted with whiskey breath.
I carry that dead embrace inside me yet
like a foreign object the flesh tries to reject.
Written by Robert Graves | Create an image from this poem

Welsh Incident

 'But that was nothing to what things came out
From the sea-caves of Criccieth yonder.'
'What were they? Mermaids? dragons? ghosts?'
'Nothing at all of any things like that.'
'What were they, then?'
 'All sorts of ***** things,
Things never seen or heard or written about,
Very strange, un-Welsh, utterly peculiar
Things. Oh, solid enough they seemed to touch,
Had anyone dared it. Marvellous creation,
All various shapes and sizes, and no sizes,
All new, each perfectly unlike his neighbour,
Though all came moving slowly out together.'
'Describe just one of them.'
 'I am unable.'
'What were their colours?'
 'Mostly nameless colours,
Colours you'd like to see; but one was puce
Or perhaps more like crimson, but not purplish.
Some had no colour.'
 'Tell me, had they legs?'
'Not a leg or foot among them that I saw.'
'But did these things come out in any order?'
What o'clock was it? What was the day of the week?
Who else was present? How was the weather?'
'I was coming to that. It was half-past three
On Easter Tuesday last. The sun was shining.
The Harlech Silver Band played Marchog Jesu
On thrity-seven shimmering instruments
Collecting for Caernarvon's (Fever) Hospital Fund.
The populations of Pwllheli, Criccieth,
Portmadoc, Borth, Tremadoc, Penrhyndeudraeth,
Were all assembled. Criccieth's mayor addressed them
First in good Welsh and then in fluent English,
Twisting his fingers in his chain of office,
Welcoming the things. They came out on the sand,
Not keeping time to the band, moving seaward
Silently at a snail's pace. But at last
The most odd, indescribable thing of all
Which hardly one man there could see for wonder
Did something recognizably a something.'
'Well, what?'
 'It made a noise.'
 'A frightening noise?'
'No, no.'
 'A musical noise? A noise of scuffling?'
'No, but a very loud, respectable noise ---
Like groaning to oneself on Sunday morning
In Chapel, close before the second psalm.'
'What did the mayor do?'
 'I was coming to that.'

Book: Radiant Verses: A Journey Through Inspiring Poetry