Robert Graves Poetry on the World Wide Web
So far there are two complete volumes of Robert Graves poetry available via the web: "Fairies and Fusiliers" and "Country Sentiment". These can be accessed by following the links below. In addition to these collections published by Graves himself, there are available groups of poems put together by other individuals, reflecting their own interests and favourites. Forty minutes of Graves reading his own poetry and prose can be found on the Robert Graves Archive Audio page, which lists the contents of each audio file. Each recording is available in 3 formats. Comments on some of the poems can be found in the Difficult Questions, Easy Answers section.
A note on the texts available here: "Fairies and Fusiliers" and "Country Sentiment" contain the versions of the poems originally published. Graves was an inveterate reviser, and many poems exist in different versions. None of the other collections available from this page indicate which versions of poems have been used.
The Robert Graves Archive welcomes comments about this and other pages.
- Fairies and Fusiliers, 1918. moved from http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/graves/ to: http://www.bartleby.com/120/index.html in September 1999 [link updated 16th September 1999]
- "To an Ungentle Critic", "An Old Twenty-Third Man", "To Lucasta on Going to the War--for the Fourth Time", "Two Fusiliers", "To Robert Nichols", "Dead Cow Farm", "Goliath and David", "Babylon", "Mr. Philosopher", "The Cruel Moon", "Finland", "A Pinch of Salt", "The Caterpillar", "Sorley's Weather", "The Cottage", "The Last Post", "When I'm Killed", "Letter to S. S. from Mametz Wood", "A Dead Boche", "Faun", "The Spoilsport", "The Shivering Beggar", "Jonah", "John Skelton", "I Wonder What it Feels Like to be Drowned?", "Double Red Daisies", "Careers", "I'd Love to be a Fairy's Child", "The Next War", "Strong Beer", "Marigolds", "The Lady Visitor in the Pauper Ward", "Love and Black Magic", "Smoke-Rings", "A Child's Nightmare", "Escape", "The Bough of Nonsense", "Not Dead", "A Boy in Church", "Corporal Stare", "The Assault Heroic", "The Poet in the Nursery", "In the Wilderness", "Cherry-Time", "1915", "Free Verse".
- This electronic edition of the collection is identical to the paper original, and is located at Columbia University's Project Bartleby site. [link updated 16th September 1999]
- Project Gutenberg full text edition of: Country Sentiment (1920).
- Available from 31st August 1998 [Etext #1418]. Four download sites listed, text & zip formats. The format is plain vanilla: unlike "Fairies and Fusiliers" the poems are not individually accessible by hyperlink, and the whole document has to be downloaded. Contains:
- "A Frosty Night", "Song for Two Children", "Dicky", "The Three Drinkers", "The Boy out of Church", "After the Play", "One Hard Look", "True Johnny", "The Voice of Beauty Drowned", "The God Called Poetry", "Rocky Acres", "Advice to Lovers", "Nebuchadnezzar's Fall", "Give us Rain", "Allie", "Loving Henry", "Brittle Bones", "Apples and Water", "Manticor in Arabia", "Outlaws", "Baloo Loo for Jenny", "Hawk and Buckle", "The "Alice Jean"", "The Cupboard", "The Beacon", "Pot and Kettle", "Ghost Raddled", "Neglectful Edward", "The Well-dressed Children", "Thunder at Night", "To E.M.--A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme", "Jane", "Vain and Careless", "Nine o'Clock", "The Picture Book", "The Promised Lullaby"
- Untermeyer, Louis, ed., 1920: Modern British Poetry: Robert Graves selection. Moved from: http://www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/mbp/89.html to http://www.bartleby.com/103/index2.html, September 1999. The structure of the document has changed, so the new link is to the author index page: this contains links to the individual poems by Graves. [link updated 16th September 1999]
- (Project Bartelby edition):
"It's a Queer Time," "A Pinch of Salt," "I Wonder What It Feels Like to be Drowned?," "The Last Post."
- The Cosma Shalizi site, which includes more than thirty poems by Robert Graves, has moved from the University of Wisconsin to The Santa Fe Institute, New Mexico. [broken link observed 6 May 99; new link established 12 May 99.]
- "Angry Samson," "Beauty in Trouble," "Bitter Thoughts on Receiving a Slice of Cordelia's Wedding Cake," "Cold Weather Proverb," "Coronation Address," "Cry Faugh!" "Darien," "Dialogue on the Headland," "Fragment of a Lost Poem," "From the Embassy," "In the Wilderness," "Leaving the Rest Unsaid," "On Portents," "Outlaws," "Penthesileia," "Pure Death" "Return of the Goddess," "Rhea," "The Bards," "The Bedpost," "The Eremites," "The Finding of Love," "The Siren's Welcome to Cronos," "The Thieves," "The White Goddess", "The Worms of History," "Through Nightmare," "To Be Called a Bear," "To Bring the Dead to Life," "To Juan at the Winter Solstice," "Unicorn and the White Doe," "Warning to Children"
- Graves poems available from Brigham Young University: Patchwork Quilt; Jests of the Clock; Sorley's Weather; Goliath and David. The Graves poem Big Words is mounted for comparison with one by the "home-fire stoker" Edward A. Guest: "Big Deeds". [added 22 May 1999]
- Graves poems available from: http://www.iag.net/~deorum/. Individual poems have been linked since the local index page features a list which is the same colour as the as the background on low-spec browsers (until the links have been clicked).
- "Apple Island," "At Best, Poets," "Bank Account," "Expect Nothing," "From the Embassy," "I Have a Little Cough, Sir," "In Her Praise," "A Last Poem," "The Leap," "Return of The Goddess," "She Is No Liar," "She Tells Her Love," "Strangeness," "The Three-Faced," "A Time of Waiting," "The White Goddess," "A Withering Herb". [added 01 May 1999]
- The Starred Coverelet, at http://www.serrano.net/abotey/poetes/. [added 20 February 2000]
- A Last Poem, at http://www.jex.com/will/. [added 20 February 2000]
- "In Dedication" (poem which prefaces "The White Goddess": a variant of the poem available below) - Reddeer site.
- "The White Goddess" - (Two Australian sites, very similar):
- (a): with a distorted graphic of Botticelli's "Three Graces" and a midi file;
- and (b): "The White Goddess" - the "Devouia" site,
- with a less distorted graphic of the "Three Graces", and the same midi file.
- Robert Graves poems at Red Frog: four poems: "First Love", "Flying Crooked", "Symptoms of Love", and "The Quiet Glades of Eden". [Site no longer in existence: link removed 22 November 1999]
- "A Pinch of Salt", "Rocky Acres", and "Last Love" (Steve Spanoudis' site at Geocities). Over 400 poets represented at the moment: see http://www.geocities.com/~spanoudi/poems/ This is an interesting site in general.
- Nine popular poems from a server in France: The Cool Web; Song of Contrariety; Flying Crooked; At First Sight; Down, Wanton, Down!; With Her Lips Only; The Thieves; She Tells Her Love While Half Asleep; Counting the Beats. [link added 9th August 1999]
- Thirteen poems located at: http://members.tripod.com/~Ian5/rgpa.html [link added 22 November 1999]:
Counting The Beats (verse 1); Hooded Flame; Spoils; Possibly; The Visitation; Seldom Yet Now (verse 1); Variables Of Green; The Far Side Of Your Moon; The Gorge; She To Him; The Snapped Thread; On Giving; Dew-drop and Diamond.
- "She tells her love . . ." at: Western Michigan University Department of English
- "Down, Wanton, Down!". This is the first Graves poem I saw on the Internet, back in March 1994. Originally found via a Gopher search. At: Western Michigan University Department of English
- Robert Dafydd Cadwalader's site has one poem: "Welsh Incident"
- "Counting the Beats" (Rick Geib's site)
- "Counting the Beats" - Swedish site
- "Counting the Beats" at: Western Michigan University Department of English
- "Counting the Beats" at: http://www.pioneeris.net/poetry/. [added 20 February 2000]
- "Sea Side" - Korean site. [There are errors in the transcription, including: an 'and' which has lost its 'a'; and 'sixteenish' has lost an 'e' and gained an 'n'.] [link added 9th August 1999]
- Three poems taken from The New Oxford Book of Light Verse:
- A Slice of Wedding Cake
- The Persian Version
- Wm. Brazier [link added 9th August 1999]
- The Thieves. Read 'dispense' in the first line. [link added 9th August 1999]
- Call It A Good Marriage. [link added 9th August 1999]
- One of Graves' masterpieces of compression, In Broken Images. The poem contains the essence of Graves' contrast between male and female modes of thought [link added 9th August 1999]
Page updated 20 February 2000
Home Page | Email the Archive