Established Lovers
ROBERT GRAVES
The established lovers of an elder generation
Dead from the waist down, every man of them,
Have now expired for sure
And, after nine days’ public threnody,
Lapse to oblivion, or literature . . .
Clerks of Establishment must therefore search
For faces fit to people the blank spaces.
Dead from the waist down, every man of them,
Have now expired for sure
And, after nine days’ public threnody,
Lapse to oblivion, or literature . . .
Clerks of Establishment must therefore search
For faces fit to people the blank spaces.
Faces enough are found, to pretend modesty
And mask their yearning for the public call:
Pluperfect candidates
Having long ceased to live as lovers do . . .
Clerks of Establishment, checking the dates,
Can feel no qualm in recommending Orders,
Titles, and honorary love-doctorates.
And mask their yearning for the public call:
Pluperfect candidates
Having long ceased to live as lovers do . . .
Clerks of Establishment, checking the dates,
Can feel no qualm in recommending Orders,
Titles, and honorary love-doctorates.
Obseive him well, the scarlet-robed academician
Stalled with his peers, an Order on his breast,
And (who could doubt it?) free
Of such despairs and voices as attended
His visits to that grotto below sea
Where once he served a glare-eyed Demoness
And swore her his unswerving verity.
Stalled with his peers, an Order on his breast,
And (who could doubt it?) free
Of such despairs and voices as attended
His visits to that grotto below sea
Where once he served a glare-eyed Demoness
And swore her his unswerving verity.