Robert Graves Quotes

If there’s no money in poetry, neither is there poetry in money.

Love without hope, as when the young bird-catcher Swept off his tall hat to the Squire’s own daughter, So let the imprisoned larks escape and fly Singing about her head, as she rode by.

The poet is the unsatisfied child who dares to ask the difficult question which arises from the schoolmaster’s answer to his simple question, and then the still more difficult question which arises from that.

Nine-tenths of English poetic literature is the result either of vulgar careerism, or of a poet trying to keep his hand in. Most poets are dead by their late twenties.

Love is a universal migraine A bright stain on the vision Blotting out reason.

Julia: how Irishly you sacrifice Love to pity, pity to ill-humour, Yourself to love, still haggling at the price.

Why have such scores of lovely, gifted girls Married impossible men?

Counting the slow heart beats, The bleeding to death of time in slow heart beats, Wakeful they lie.

For a woman to have a liaison is almost always pardonable, and occasionally, when the lover chosen is sufficiently distinguished, even admirable.

The function of poetry is religious invocation of the Muse; its use is the experience of mixed exaltation and horror that her presence excites.

Stirring suddenly from long hibernation, I knew myself once more a poet Guarded by timeless principalities Against the worm of death.

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

To bring the dead to life Is no great magic. Few are wholly dead: Blow on a dead man’s embers And a live flame will start.

To evoke posterity Is to weep on your own grave, Ventriloquizing for the unborn.

What, then, was war? No mere discord of flags But an infection of the common sky That sagged ominously upon the earth Even when the season was the airiest May?

In fear begotten, I begot in fear. Would you have had me cast fear out So that you should not be?

Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark—a shining space With the grave’s narrowness, though not its peace.

Goodbye to All That.

Children are dumb to say how hot the day is, How hot the scent is of the summer rose.

Love shall come at your command Yet will not stay.