"Are you cold too, poor Pleiads,
This frosty night?"
"Yes, and so are the Hyads:
See us cuddle and hug," says the Pleiads,
"All six in a ring: it keeps us warm:
We huddle together like birds in a storm:

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. Star-Talk (l. 9-14). . . Oxford Book of Twentieth-Century English Verse, The. Philip Larkin, ed. (1973) Oxford University Press.)

All saints revile her, and all sober men
Ruled by the God Apollo's golden mean?

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. The White Goddess (l. 1-2). . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)

We forget cruelty and past betrayal,
Heedless of where the next bright bolt may fall.

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. The White Goddess (l. 21-22). . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)

Anthropologists are a connecting link between poets and scientists; though their field-work among primitive peoples has often made them forget the language of science.

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist. Speech, December 6, 1963, London School of Economics. "Mammon," Mammon and the Black Goddess (1965).)

What we now call "finance" is, I hold, an intellectual perversion of what began as warm human love.

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist. speech, Dec. 6, 1963, London School of Economics. "Mammon," Mammon and the Black Goddess (1965).)

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

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist. speech, Dec. 6, 1963, London School of Economics. "Mammon," Mammon and the Black Goddess (1965).)

the sweet-cupid-lipped and tassel-yarded
Delicate-stomached dwellers
In Pygmy Alley,

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. Ogres and Pygmies (l. 25-27). . . Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, The. Richard Ellmann and Robert O'Clair, eds. (2d ed., 1988) W. W. Norton & Company.)

By Jesus's time the Law of Moses, originally established for the government of a semi-barbarous nation of herdsmen and hill-farmers, resembled a petulant great-grandfather who tries to govern a family business from his sick-bed in the chimney-corner, unaware of the changes that have taken place in the world since he was able to get about: his authority must not be questioned, yet his orders, since no longer relevant, must be reinterpreted in another sense, if the business is not to go bankrupt. When the old man says, for instance: "It is time for the women to grind their lapfuls of millet in the querns", this is taken to mean: "It is time to send the sacks of wheat to the water-mill."

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. King Jesus, Chapter 21, Farrar Straus Giroux (1946).)

War was return of earth to ugly earth,
War was foundering of sublimities,
Extinction of each happy art and faith
By which the world had still kept head in air.

(Robert Graves (1895-1985), British poet, novelist, critic. Recalling War (l. 31-34). . . Oxford Anthology of English Literature, The, Vols. I-II. Frank Kermode and John Hollander, general eds. (1973) Oxford University Press (Also published as six paperback vols.: Medieval English Literature, J. B. Trapp, ed.; The Literature of Renaissance England, John Hollander and Frank Kermode, eds.; The Restoration and the Eighteenth Century, Martin Price, ed.; Romantic Poetry and Prose, Harold Bloom and Lionel Trilling, eds.; Victorian Prose and Poetry, Lionel Trilling and Harold Bloom, eds.; Modern British Literature, Frank Kermode and John Hollander, eds.).)