Established Lovers
The established lovers of an elder generation Dead from the waist down, every man of them, Have now expired for sure And, after nine days' public threnody, Lapse to oblivion, or literature. . . Clerks of Establishment must therefore search For faces fit to people the blank spaces.
Faces enough are found, to pretend modesty And mask their yearning for the public call: Pluperfect candidates
Having long ceased to live as lovers do ... Clerks of Establishment, checking the dates, Can feel no qualm in recommending Orders, Titles and_honorary love-doctorates.
Observe him well, the scarlet-robed academician Stalled with his peers, an Order on his breast, And (who could doubt it?) free Of such despairs and voices as attended His visits to that grotto below sea Where once he served a glare-eyed Demoness And swore her his unswerving verity.
ROBERT GRAVES ©1959
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