SILVER-BADGED WAITER
Poor trussed-up lad, what piteous guise
Cloaks the late splendour of your eyes,
Stiffens the fleetness of your face
Into a mask of sleek disgrace,
And makes a smooth caricature
Of your taut body’s swift and sure
Poise, like a proud bird waiting one
Moment ere he taunt the sun;
Your body that stood foolish-wise
Stormed by the treasons of the skies,
Star-like that hung, deliberate
Above the dubieties of Fate,
But with an April gesture chose
Unutterable and certain woes!
And now you stand with discreet charm
Dropping the napkin round your arm,
Anticipate your tip while you
Hear the commercial travellers chew.
You shuffle with their soups and beers
Who held at heel the howling fears,
You whose young limbs were proud to dare
Challenge the black hosts of despair!
ROBERT GRAVES
CYNICS AND ROMANTICS
In club and messroom let them sit
At skirmish of ingenious wit;
Deriding Love, yet not with hearts
Accorded to those healthier parts
Of grim self-mockery, but with mean
And burrowing search for things unclean,
Pretended deafness, twisted sense,
Sharp innuendoes rising thence,
And affectation of prude-shame
That shrinks from using the short name.
We are not envious of their sour
Disintegrations of Love’s power,
Their swift analysis of the stabs
Devised by virgins and by drabs
(Powder or lace or scent) to excite
A none-too-jaded appetite.
They never guess of Love as we
Have found the amazing Art to be,
Pursuit of dazzling flame, or flight
From web-hung blackness of night,
With laughter only to express
Care overborne by carelessness;
They never bridge from small to great,
From nod or glance to ideal Fate,
From clouded forehead or slow sigh
To doubt and agony looming by,
From shining gaze and hair flung free
To infinity and to eternity—
They sneer and poke a treacherous joke
With scorn for our rusticity.