Robert Graves

Robert Graves, the versatile English writer, was the son of the Irish poet Alfred Percival Graves. Robert Graves established his reputation with Good-bye to All That (1929), an outspoken

Bards, The

by Robert Graves (1895–1985)

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16

 The bards falter in shame, their running verse 
 Stumbles, with marrow-bones the drunken diners 
 Pelt them for their delay. 
 It is a something fearful in the song 
 Plagues them—an unknown grief that like a churl 
 Goes commonplace in cowskin 
 And bursts unheralded, crowing and coughing, 
 An unpilled holly-club twirled in his hand, 
 Into their many-shielded, samite-curtained, 

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