Full Moon - Poem By Robert Graves

Full Moon

              -  By Robert Graves

As I walked out that sultry night,

I heard the stroke of one.

The moon, attained to her full height,

Stood beaming like the sun:

She exorcised the ghostly wheat

To mute assent in love's defeat,

Whose tryst had now begun.

The fields lay sick beneath my tread,

A tedious owlet cried,

A nightingale above my head

With this or that replied - 

Like man and wife who nightly keep

Inconsequent debate in sleep

As they dream side by side.

Your phantom wore the moon's cold mask

My phantom wore the same;

Forgetful of the feverish task

In hope of which they came,

Each image held the other's eyes

And watched a grey distraction rise

To cloud the eager flame - 

To cloud the eager flame of love,

To fog the shining gate;

They held the tryannous queen above

Sole mover of their fate,

They glared as marble statues glare

Across the tessellated stair

Or down the halls of state.

And now warm earth was Arctic Sea,

Each breath came dagger-keen;

Two bergs of glinting ice were we,

The broad moon sailed between;

There swam the mermaids, tailed and finned,

And love went by upon the wind

As though it had not been.

Twined together and, as is customary,

For words of rapture groping, they

'Never such love,' swore, 'ever before was!'

Contrast with all loves that had failed or staled

Registered their own as love indeed.

And was not this to blab idly

The heart's fated inconstancy?

Better in love to seal the love-sure lips:

For truly love was before words were,

And no word given, no words broken.

When the word 'love' is uttered

(Love, the near-honourable malady

With which in greed and haste they

Each other do infect and curse)

Or, worse, is written down......

Wise after the event, by love withered,

A 'never more!' most frantically

Sorrow and shame would proclaim

Such as, they'd swear, never before were:

True lovers even in this.