Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
The Kiss By: Robert Graves
51
Resources
www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/193
www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1/it/collections/graves
The Kiss
Important Phrases
Are you shaken, are you stirred
By a whisper of love,
Spellbound to a word
Does Time cease to move,
Till her calm grey eye
Expands to a sky
And the clouds of her hair
Like storms go by?
Then the lips that you have kissed
Turn to frost and fire,
And a white-steaming mist
Obscures desire:
So back to their birth
Fade water, air, earth,
And the First Power moves
Over void and dearth.
Is that Love? no, but Death,
A passion, a shout,
The deep in-breath,
The breath roaring out,
And once that is flown,
You must lie alone,
Without hope, without life,
Poor flesh, sad bone.
"Then the lips that you have kissed
Turn to frost and fire,"
Representing changing from having something and then losing it.
"Is that Love? no, but Death,"
Showing Robert's sadness about love.
"You must lie alone,
Without hope, without life, Poor flesh, sad bone."
Popular Poems
After He Left The War
- 1805
- A Ballad of Nursery Rhyme
- A Child's Nightmare
- A First Review
- A Lover Since Childhood
- A Rhyme of Friends
- A Song for Two Children
- 1915
- A Boy In Church
- A Dead Boche
- A Frosty Night
- A Pinch of Salt
- A Slice of Wedding Cake
- After the Play
In January 1918, at the age of twenty-two, he married eighteen-year-old Nancy Nicholson, with whom he was to have four children. Traumatized by the war, he went to Oxford with his wife and took a position at St. John's College.
Starting Poetry
Graves earned the reputation as an accomplished war poet. After meeting the American poet and theorist Laura Riding in 1926, Graves's poetry underwent a significant transformation.
In 1927, Graves and his first wife separated permanently, and in 1929 he published Goodbye to All That, an autobiography.
Early Years
Graves described early visits to his German cousins’ estate, and recounts his unhappy years at Charterhouse School, where he first became involved in writing and editing poetry. He won cups for boxing. He also developed an interest in mountain climbing.
War Years
Robert Graves
When war was declared in August 1914, Graves enlisted immediately.
On July 20, 1916 during the Battle of the Somme, Graves was struck by a shell fragment, which passed through his shoulder and chest, seriously injuring his right lung. He had survived his wounds and was in England recovering from his wounds.
Born on July 24, 1895 in Wimbledon, near London.
Son of Amalie von Ranke and Alfred Perceval Graves who was a minor Irish poet.