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

Robert Graves

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Robert Graves
Age: 90 †
Born: 1895
Born: July 24
Died: 1985
Died: December 7
Literary Critic
Military Personnel
Mythographer
Novelist
Playwright
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Theatre Critic
Translator
Robert von Ranke-Graves
Robert Von Ranke-Graves
Robert Ranke Graves
Robert von Ranke Graves
Religious
Exaltation
Use
Excites
Experience
Muse
Mixed
Presence
Horror
Function
Poetry
Invocation

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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.
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What we now call finance is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.
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Well, we've been lucky devils both And there is no need for a pledge or oath To bind our lovely friendship fast, By firmer stuff Close bound enough.
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The remarkable thing about Shakespeare is that he really is very good, in spite of all the people who say he is very good.
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Take your delight in momentariness, Walk between dark and dark a shining space With the grave 's narrowness, though not its peace.
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The butterfly, a cabbage-white, (His honest idiocy of flight) Will never now, it is too late, Master the art of flying straight.
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Love is a universal migraine. A bright stain on the vision, Blotting out reason.
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For I now realize that what overcame me that evening was a sudden awareness of the power of intuition, the supra-logic that cuts out all routine processes of thought and leaps straight from problem to answer.
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Marriage, like money, is still with us and, like money, progressively devalued.
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Poet, never chase the dream. Laugh yourself and turn away. Mask your hunger, let it seem Small matter if he come or stay But when he nestles in your hand at last, Close up your fingers tight and hold him fast.
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Prose books are the show dogs I breed and sell to support my cat.
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As you are woman, so be lovely: As you are lovely, so be various, Merciful as constant, constant as various, So be mine, as I yours for ever.
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Any honest housewife would sort them out,/ Having a nose for fish, an eye for apples.
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The art of poetry consists in taking the poem through draft after draft, without losing its inspirational magic: he removes everything irrelevant or distracting, and tightens up what is left. Lazy poets never carry their early drafts far enough: some even believe that virtue lies in the original doodle scrawled on the back of an envelope.
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This seems to me a philosophical question, and therefore irrelevant, question. A poet's destiny is to love.
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As was the custom in such cases, the pear tree was charged with murder and sentenced to be uprooted and burned.
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Originally marriage meant the sale of a woman by one man to another now most women sell themselves though they have no intention of delivering the goods listed in the bill of sale.
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She tells her love while half asleep, In the dark hours, With half-words whispered low: As Earth stirs in her winter sleep And puts out grass and flowers Despite the snow, Despite the falling snow.
Robert Graves
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A well-chosen anthology is a complete dispensary of medicine for the more common mental disorders, and may be used as much for prevention as cure.
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Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
Robert Graves