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WHIPPERGINNY

WHIPPERGINNY

BY

ROBERT GRAVES






NEW YORK

ALFRED A. KNOPF : MCMXXIII
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TO

EDWARD MARSH


Printed in Great Britain
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AUTHOR’S NOTE

The poems in this volume cover a period of three years, beginning at theNew Year of 1920, except for the rhymes “Henry and Mary,” “What did Idream?” and “Mirror, Mirror!” with parts of “An English Wood,” “The BedPost” and of “Unicorn and the White Doe,” which are bankrupt stock of1918, the year in which I was writing Country Sentiment. The PierGlass, a volume which followed Country Sentiment, similarly containsa few pieces continuing the mood of this year, the desire to escape froma painful war neurosis into an Arcadia of amatory fancy, but theprevailing 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 pieceswill be found evidences of greater detachment in the poet and theappearance of a new series of problems in religion, psychology andphilosophy, no less exacting than their predecessors, but, it may besaid, of less emotional intensity. The “Interlude” in the middle of thebook was written before the appearance of these less lyrical pieces, butmust be read as an apology for the book being now even less homogeneousthan before. To those who demand unceasing emotional stress in poetry atwhatever cost to the poet—I was one of these myself until recently—Ihave no apology to offer; but only this proverb from the Chinese, thatthe petulant{vi} protests of all the lords and ladies of the ImperialCourt will weigh little with the whale when, recovering from his painfulexcretory condition, he need no longer supply the Guild of HonourablePerfumers with their accustomed weight of ambergris.

ROBERT GRAVES.

The World’s End,
Islip.
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CONTENTS