“Essere un poeta è una condizione piuttosto che una professione.”
rispondendo a un questionario, Questionnaire: The Cost of Letters, Horizon 14, n. 81, Londra settembre 1946
Robert Graves:
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Robert Graves Frasi e Citazioni
Robert Graves: Frasi in inglese
“But old Death, who can't forget,
Waits his time and watches yet,
Waits and watches by the door.”
"The Cottage".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Contesto: 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.
"The Next War".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
Contesto: Another War soon gets begun,
A dirtier, a more glorious one;
Then, boys, you'll have to play, all in;
It's the cruellest team will win.
So hold your nose against the stink
And never stop too long to think.
Wars don't change except in name;
The next one must go just the same,
And new foul tricks unguessed before
Will win and justify this War.
Country Sentiment (1920)
Contesto: I am an old man
With my bones very brittle,
Though I am a poor old man
Worth very little,
Yet I suck at my long pipe
At peace in the sun,
I do not fret nor much regret
That my work is done.
"Brittle Bones".
“The frog-pool wanted a king.
Jove sent them Old King Log.”
Origine: Claudius the God (1935), Ch. 30.
Contesto: The frog-pool wanted a king.
Jove sent them Old King Log.
I have been as deaf and blind and wooden as a log.
The frog-pool wanted a king.
Let Jove now send them Young King Stork.
Caligula's chief fault: his stork-reign was too brief.
My chief fault: I have been far too benevolent.
I repaired the ruin my predecessors spread.
I reconciled Rome and the world to monarchy again.
Rome is fated to bow to another Caesar.
Let him be mad, bloody, capricious, wasteful, lustful.
King Stork shall prove again the nature of kings.
By dulling the blade of tyranny I fell into great error.
By whetting the same blade I might redeem that error.
Violent disorders call for violent remedies.
Yet I am, I must remember, Old King Log.
I shall float inertly in the stagnant pool.
Let all the poisons that lurk in the mud hatch out.
“Love is a universal migraine.
A bright stain on the vision
Blotting out reason.”
"Symptoms of Love," lines 1-3, from More Poems (1961).
Poems
Robert Graves
libro
The White Goddess
"The White Goddess," lines 1–6, from Poems and Satires (1951).
Poems
"The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
General sources
"To Juan at the Winter Solstice," lines 37–42, from Poems 1938-1945 (1946).
Poems
"Mammon" an address at the London School of Economics (6 December 1963); published in Mammon and the Black Goddess (1965).
General sources
"Advice To Lovers"
Country Sentiment (1920)
"The God Called Poetry".
Country Sentiment (1920)
"The Cool Web," lines 9–12, from Poems 1914-1926 (1927).
Poems
"Ulysses," lines 16–20, from Poems 1930-1933 (1933).
Poems
Origine: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 28.
"The Case for Xanthippe" in The Crane Bag (1969).
General sources
"Marigolds".
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
"Sick Love," lines 10–12, from Poems 1929.
Poems
Origine: The Reader Over Your Shoulder (1943), Ch. 4: "The Use and Abuse of Official English".
"Hate Not, Fear Not".
Country Sentiment (1920)
“The dead may speak the truth only, even when it discredits themselves.”
Robert Graves
libro
The Golden Fleece
The Golden Fleece (1944), Invocation.
General sources
"To Lucasta on Going to the War — For the Fourth Time"
Fairies and Fusiliers (1917)
"I tried to re-enlist, but they told me I was too old, sir... My real age is sixty-three."
Origine: Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch.12.
