The Complete Poems Read online

  Revision, for Graves, was not just a question of craftsmanship, consummate craftsman though he was. It was an integral part of the actual process of composition, which he described as ‘a painful process of continual corrections and corrections on top of corrections and persistent dissatisfaction’.18 ‘Getting poems right’ often meant continuing to revise them over a period of years or even decades, making cuts if he felt this would improve them. Thus it was eighteen years before he found the seemingly inevitable concluding line in ‘Vanity’; and even more protracted ‘secondary elaboration’19 was required for one of his best-known poems, ‘The Cool Web’, to reach its ultimate precision and expressiveness. A case of Graves’s radical surgery was ‘The Pier-Glass’, whose excised twenty-four-line fourth section had attempted to force a resolution. Some poems (‘The Finding of Love’, for instance) were originally more than twice as long.

  Where Graves republished a poem with substantive revisions, the principal differences between the version in the first edition of the book of verse concerned (or, for uncollected poems, the version first published) and the last version are recorded in the notes to the three-volume Complete Poems. The notes also give background information on the poems, with quotations from and/or references to other poems, letters, diaries and prose works. There are notes on all the uncollected poems and the unpublished and posthumously published poems.

  Titles provided editorially in the present edition are in square brackets. Some details of punctuation – ellipses, the use of single quotation marks (double for quotations within them), punctuation relative to quotation marks and italics – have been normalized in line with Graves’s later practice; and some inconsistent spelling has been altered (though the earlier use of the hyphenated form of certain words – ‘to-day’, ‘to-morrow’ – has been respected, as in the Collected Poems). American spelling in uncollected poems has been Anglicized. Where Graves used an ampersand (&) in the manuscript of an unpublished poem it has been spelt out (‘and’). Inconsistencies in the capitalization of titles in upper-and-lower-case in contents lists have been removed.

  In the last section, a dagger (†) after the title of a poem indicates that it was posthumously published.

  The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, fourth edition, edited by Grevel Lindop (Manchester: Carcanet, 1997; London: Faber Paperback, 1999), p. 13.

  Good-bye to All That: An Autobiography (London: Cape, 1929), p.439.

  Graves to Gertrude Stein, n.d. [February(?) 1946]; In Broken Images: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1914–1946, edited by Paul O’Prey (London: Hutchinson, 1982), p.341.

  Graves to Gertrude Stein, 28 January 1946; In Broken Images, p.337.

  Collected Poems (London: Cassell, 1938), p.xiv.

  Poems and Satires 1951 (London: Cassell, 1951), ‘Foreword’, pp.viii, ix.

  See note 3, above.

  The White Goddess, p.479.

  ‘The Personal Muse’, Oxford Addresses on Poetry (London: Cassell, 1962), p.61, and Collected Writings on Poetry, edited by Paul O’Prey (Manchester: Carcanet, 1995), p.339 (‘fright and lust’, The White Goddess, p.20).

  Graves to James Reeves, 4 December 1957; Between Moon and Moon: Selected Letters of Robert Graves 1946–1972, edited by Paul O’Prey (London: Hutchinson, 1984), p.l72.

  ‘Lecture One, 1965’, Poetic Craft and Principle (London: Cassell, 1967), p.116, republished as ‘The Duende’, Collected Writings on Poetry, p.473.

  ‘Intimations of the Black Goddess’, Mammon and the Black Goddess (London: Cassell, 1965), pp.151, 162, and Collected Writings on Poetry, pp.390, 397.

  Graves’s 1956–66 diary (Canelluñ), 25–27 February, 3.

  ‘Foreword’, Collected Poems 1965 (London: Cassell, 1965).

  The White Goddess, Introduction, p.xvii.

  Graves to James Reeves, 3 June 1954; Between Moon and Moon, p.136.

  ‘The Poet and his Public’, The Crowning Privilege (London: Cassell, 1955), p.l87, and Collected Writings on Poetry, p.242.

  Good-bye to All That, pp.388–89.

  Graves employs this term from Freudian psychology in Poetic Unreason and Other Studies (London: Cecil Palmer, 1925), Chapter V.

  I

  * * *

  Over the Brazier

  (1916)

  THE POET IN THE NURSERY

  The youngest poet down the shelves was fumbling

  In a dim library, just behind the chair

  From which the ancient poet was mum-mumbling

  A song about some lovers at a Fair,

  Pulling his long white beard and gently grumbling

  That rhymes were troublesome things and never there.

  And as I groped, the whole time I was thinking

  About the tragic poem I’d been writing,…

  An old man’s life of beer and whisky drinking,

  His years of kidnapping and wicked fighting;

  And how at last, into a fever sinking,

  Remorsefully he died, his bedclothes biting.

  But suddenly I saw the bright green cover

  Of a thin pretty book right down below;

  I snatched it up and turned the pages over,

  To find it full of poetry, and so

  Put it down my neck with quick hands like a lover,

  And turned to watch if the old man saw it go.

  The book was full of funny muddling mazes,

  Each rounded off into a lovely song,

  And most extraordinary and monstrous phrases

  Knotted with rhymes like a slave-driver’s thong,

  And metre twisting like a chain of daisies

  With great big splendid words a sentence long.

  I took the book to bed with me and gloated,

  Learning the lines that seemed to sound most grand;

  So soon the lively emerald green was coated

  With intimate dark stains from my hot hand,

  While round the nursery for long months there floated

  Wonderful words no one could understand.

  PART I. – Poems Mostly Written at Charterhouse – 1910–1914

  STAR-TALK

  ‘Are you awake, Gemelli,

  This frosty night?’

  ‘We’ll be awake till reveillé,

  Which is Sunrise,’ say the Gemelli,

  ‘It’s no good trying to go to sleep:

  If there’s wine to be got we’ll drink it deep,

  But sleep is gone for to-night,

  But sleep is gone for to-night.’

  ‘Are you cold too, poor Pleiads,

  This frosty night?’

  ‘Yes, and so are the Hyads:

  See us cuddle and hug,’ say the Pleiads,

  ‘All six in a ring: it keeps us warm:

  We huddle together like birds in a storm:

  It’s bitter weather to-night,

  It’s bitter weather to-night.’

  ‘What do you hunt, Orion,

  This starry night?’

  ‘The Ram, the Bull and the Lion,

  And the Great Bear,’ says Orion,

  ‘With my starry quiver and beautiful belt

  I am trying to find a good thick pelt

  To warm my shoulders to-night,

  To warm my shoulders to-night.’

  ‘Did you hear that, Great She-bear,

  This frosty night?’

  ‘Yes, he’s talking of stripping me bare

  Of my own big fur,’ says the She-bear,

  ‘I’m afraid of the man and his terrible arrow:

  The thought of it chills my bones to the marrow,

  And the frost so cruel to-night!

  And the frost so cruel to-night!’

  ‘How is your trade, Aquarius,

  This frosty night?’

  ‘Complaints is many and various

  And my feet are cold,’ says Aquarius,

  ‘There’s Venus objects to Dolphin-scales,

  And Mars to Crab-spawn found in my pails,

  And the p
ump has frozen to-night,

  And the pump has frozen to-night.’

  THE DYING KNIGHT AND THE FAUNS

  Through the dreams of yesternight

  My blood brother great in fight

  I saw lying, slowly dying

  Where the weary woods were sighing

  With the rustle of the birches,

  With the quiver of the larches…

  Woodland fauns with hairy haunches

  Grin in wonder through the branches,

  Woodland fauns who know not fear:

  Wondering they wander near,

  Munching mushrooms red as coral,

  Bunches, too, of rue and sorrel,

  With uncouth and bestial sounds,

  Knowing naught of war and wounds.

  But the crimson life-blood oozes

  And makes roses of the daisies,

  Persian carpets of the mosses –

  Softly now his spirit passes

  As the bee forsakes the lily,

  As the berry leaves the holly;

  But the fauns still think him living,

  And with bay leaves they are weaving

  Crowns to deck him. Well they may!

  He was worthy of the Bay.

  WILLAREE

  On the rough mountain wind

  That blows so free

  Rides a little storm-sprite

  Whose name is Willaree.

  The fleecy cloudlets are not his,

  No shepherd is he,

  For he drives the shaggy thunderclouds

  Over land and sea.

  His home is on the mountain-top

  Where I love to be,

  Amid grey rocks and brambles

  And the red rowan-tree.

  He whistles down the chimney,

  He whistles to me,

  And I send greeting back to him

  Whistling cheerily.

  The great elms are battling,

  Waves are on the sea,

  Loud roars the mountain-wind –

  God rest you, Willaree!

  THE FACE OF THE HEAVENS

  Little winds in a hurry,

  Great winds over the sky,

  Clouds sleek or furry,

  Storms that rage and die,

  The whole cycle of weather

  From calm to hurricane

  Of four gales wroth together,

  Thunder, lightning, rain,

  The burning sun, snowing,

  Hailstones pattering down,

  Blue skies and red skies showing,

  Skies with a black frown,

  By these signs and wonders

  You may tell God’s mood:

  He shines, rains, thunders,

  But all His works are good.

  JOLLY YELLOW MOON

  Oh, now has faded from the West

  A sunset red as wine,

  And beast and bird are hushed to rest

  When the jolly yellow moon doth shine.

  Come comrades, roam we round the mead

  Where couch the sleeping kine;

  The breath of night blows soft indeed,

  And the jolly yellow moon doth shine.

  And step we slowly, friend with friend,

  Let arm with arm entwine,

  And voice with voice together blend,

  For the jolly yellow moon doth shine.

  Whether we loudly sing or soft,

  The tune goes wondrous fine;

  Our chorus sure will float aloft

  Where the jolly yellow moon doth shine.

  YOUTH AND FOLLY

  (‘Life is a very awful thing! You young fellows are too busy being jolly to realize the folly of your lives.’

  – A Charterhouse Sermon)

  In Chapel often when I bawl

  The hymns, to show I’m musical,

  With bright eye and cheery voice

  Bidding Christian folk rejoice,

  Shame be it said, I’ve not a thought

  Of the One Being whom I ought

  To worship: with unwitting roar

  Other godheads I adore.

  I celebrate the Gods of Mirth

  And Love and Youth and Springing Earth,

  Bacchus, beautiful, divine,

  Gulping down his heady wine,

  Dear Pan piping in his hollow,

  Fiery-headed King Apollo

  And rugged Atlas all aloof

  Holding up the purple roof.

  I have often felt and sung,

  ‘It’s a good thing to be young:

  Though the preacher says it’s folly,

  Is it foolish to be jolly?’

  I have often prayed in fear,

  ‘Let me never grow austere;

  Let me never think, I pray,

  Too much about Judgement Day;

  Never, never feel in Spring,

  “Life’s a very awful thing!’”

  Then I realize and start

  And curse my arrogant young heart,

  Bind it over to confess

  Its horrible ungodliness,

  Set myself penances, and sigh

  That I was born in sin, and try

  To find the whole world vanity.

  GHOST MUSIC

  Gloomy and bare the organ-loft,

  Bent-backed and blind the organist.

  From rafters looming shadowy,

  From the pipes’ tuneful company,

  Drifted together drowsily,

  Innumerable, formless, dim,

  The ghosts of long-dead melodies,

  Of anthems, stately, thunderous,

  Of Kyries shrill and tremulous:

  In melancholy drowsy-sweet

  They huddled there in harmony,

  Like bats at noontide rafter-hung.

  IN SPITE

  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 petty

  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!

  IN THE WILDERNESS

  He, of his gentleness,

  Thirsting and hungering

  Walked in the wilderness;

  Soft words of grace he spoke

  Unto lost desert-folk

  That listened wondering.

  He heard the bittern call

  From ruined palace-wall,

  Answered him brotherly;

  He held communion

  With the she-pelican

  Of lonely piety.

  Basilisk, cockatrice,

  Flocked to his homilies,
>
  With mail of dread device,

  With monstrous barbèd stings,

  With eager dragon-eyes;

  Great bats on leathern wings

  And old, blind, broken things

  Mean in their miseries.

  Then ever with him went,

  Of all his wanderings

  Comrade, with ragged coat,

  Gaunt ribs – poor innocent –

  Bleeding foot, burning throat,

  The guileless young scapegoat:

  For forty nights and days

  Followed in Jesus’ ways,

  Sure guard behind him kept,

  Tears like a lover wept.

  OH, AND OH!

  Oh, and oh!

  The world’s a muddle,

  The clouds are untidy,

  Moon lopsidey,

  Shining in a puddle.

  Down dirty streets in stench and smoke

  The pale townsfolk

  Crawl and kiss and cuddle,

  In doorways hug and huddle;

  Loutish he

  And sluttish she

  In loathsome love together press

  And unbelievable ugliness.

  These spiders spin a loathly woof!

  I walk aloof,

  Head burning and heart snarling,

  Tread feverish quick;

  My love is sick;

  Far away lives my darling.

  CHERRY-TIME

  Cherries of the night are riper

  Than the cherries pluckt at noon:

  Gather to your fairy piper

  When he pipes his magic tune:

  Merry, merry,

  Take a cherry;

  Mine are sounder,

  Mine are rounder,

  Mine are sweeter

  For the eater

  Under the moon.

  And you’ll be fairies soon.

  In the cherry pluckt at night,

  With the dew of summer swelling,

  There’s a juice of pure delight,

  Cool, dark, sweet, divinely smelling.

  Merry, merry,

  Take a cherry;

  Mine are sounder,

  Mine are rounder,

  Mine are sweeter

  For the eater

  In the moonlight.

  And you’ll be fairies quite.

  When I sound the fairy call,

  Gather here in silent meeting,

  Chin to knee on the orchard wall,

  Cooled with dew and cherries eating.