Apologies for the quiet around here - we’ve been a bit under the weather at Bookkake towers with the seasonal lurgy. However, nothing shall stop the Monday dirty poem, so here goes.
Well, first we should say that this was sent in by David Jones, who said we “should have shame at your paucity of vocabulary that you can label Neruda On Wine dirty, when it is erudite, fanciful, a feast of images and knowledge” and we should “avoid using that same shabby, inadequate and demeaning word for this fun poem by Graves”. I’m grateful to David for sending this one in, and agree that it indeed contains a wealth of startling and appropriate imagery from the battlefield and the mediaeval court, set to a lovely iambic tetrameter in a fine double couplet quatrain structure. It is also addressed to the poet’s johnson.
Down, wanton, down
Down, wanton, down have you no shame
That at the whisper of Love’s name,
Or Beauty’s, presto! up you raise
Your angry head and stand at gaze?
Poor Bombard-captain, sworn to reach
The ravelin and effect a breach—
Indifferent what you storm or why,
So be that in the breach you die!
Love may be blind, but Love at least
Knows what is man and what mere beast;
Or Beauty wayward, but requires
More delicacy from her squires.
Tell me, my witless, whose one boast
Could be your staunchness at the post,
When were you made a man of parts
To think fine and profess the arts?
Will many-gifted Beauty come
Bowing to your bald rule of thumb,
Or Love swear loyalty to your crown?
Be gone, have done! Down, wanton, down!
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
