Robert Graves

Sullen Moods

  Love, do not count your labour lost
    Though I turn sullen, grim, retired
  Even at your side; my thought is crossed
    With fancies by old longings fired.

  And when I answer you, some days
    Vaguely and wildly, do not fear
  That my love goes forbidden ways
    Hating the laws that bind it here.

  If I speak gruffly, this mood is
    Mere indignation at my own
  Shortcomings, plagues, uncertainties;
    I forget the gentler tone.

  ‘You,’ now that you have come to be
    My one beginning, prime and end,
  I count at last as wholly ‘me,’
    Lover no longer nor yet friend.

  Friendship is flattery, though close hid;
    Must I then flatter my own mind?
  And must (which laws of shame forbid)
    Blind love of you make self-love blind?

  Do not repay me my own coin,
    The sharp rebuke, the frown, the groan;
  But stir my memory to disjoin
    Your emanation from my own.

  Help me to see you as before
    When overwhelmed and dead, almost,
  I stumbled on that secret door
    Which saves the live man from the ghost.

  Be once again the distant light,
    Promise of glory, not yet known
  In full perfection--wasted quite
    When on my imperfection thrown.