Whipperginny
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Whipperginny - Robert von Ranke Graves
WHIPPERGINNY
WHIPPERGINNY
BY
ROBERT GRAVES
NEW YORK
ALFRED A. KNOPF : MCMXXIII
TO
EDWARD MARSH
Printed in Great Britain
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The poems in this volume cover a period of three years, beginning at the New Year of 1920, except for the rhymes Henry and Mary,
What did I dream?
and Mirror, Mirror!
with parts of An English Wood,
The Bed Post
and of Unicorn and the White Doe,
which are bankrupt stock of 1918, the year in which I was writing Country Sentiment. The Pier Glass, a volume which followed Country Sentiment, similarly contains a few pieces continuing the mood of this year, the desire to escape from a painful war neurosis into an Arcadia of amatory fancy, but the prevailing mood of The Pier Glass is aggressive and disciplinary, under the stress of the same neurosis, rather than escapist. Whipperginny for a while continues so, but in most of the later pieces will be found evidences of greater detachment in the poet and the appearance of a new series of problems in religion, psychology and philosophy, no less exacting than their predecessors, but, it may be said, of less emotional intensity. The Interlude
in the middle of the book was written before the appearance of these less lyrical pieces, but must be read as an apology for the book being now even less homogeneous than before. To those who demand unceasing emotional stress in poetry at whatever cost to the poet—I was one of these myself until recently—I have no apology to offer; but only this proverb from the Chinese, that the petulant protests of all the lords and ladies of the Imperial Court will weigh little with the whale when, recovering from his painful excretory condition, he need no longer supply the Guild of Honourable Perfumers with their accustomed weight of ambergris.
ROBERT GRAVES.
The World’s End,
Islip.
CONTENTS
WHIPPERGINNY (A card game, obsolete.
—Standard Dictionary.)
WHIPPERGINNY
(A card game, obsolete.
— Standard Dictionary.)
To cards we have recourse
When Time with cruelty runs,
To courtly Bridge for stress of love,
To Nap for noise of guns.
On fairy earth we tread,
No present problems vex
Where man’s four humours fade to suits,
With red and black for sex.
Where phantom gains accrue
By tricks instead of cash,
Where pasteboard federacies of Powers
In battles-royal clash.
Then read the antique word
That hangs above this page
As type of mirth-abstracted joy,
Calm terror, noiseless rage,
A realm of ideal thought,
Obscured by veils of Time,
Cipher remote enough to stand
As namesake for my rhyme,