The Yet Unsayable  (Robert Graves)

It was always fiercer, brighter, gentler than could be told
Even in words quickened by Truth's dark eye:
Its absence, whirlpool; its presence, deluge;
Its time, astonishment; its magnitude,
A murderous dagger-point.
                                                So we surrender
Our voices to the dried and scurrying leaves
And choose our own long-predetermined path
From the unsaid to the yet unsayable
In silence of love and love's temerity.

Love in Barrenness  (Robert Graves)

Below the ridge a raven flew
And we heard the lost curlew
Mourning out of sight below.
Mountain tops were touched with snow;
Even the long dividing plain
Showed no wealth of sheep or grain,
But fields of boulders lay like corn
And raven's croak was shepherd's horn
Where slow cloud-shadow strayed across
A pasture of thin heath and moss.

The North Wind rose:  I saw him press
With lusty force against your dress,
Moulding your body's inward grace
And streaming off from your set face;
So now no longer flesh and blood
But poised in marble flight you stood.
O wingless Victory, loved of men,
Who could withstand your beauty then?

The Impossible  (Robert Graves)

Dear love, since the impossible proves
    Our sole recourse from this distress,
Claim it:  the ebony rigual-mask of no
    Cannot outstare a living yes.

Claiming it without despond or hate
    Or greed; but in your gentler tone
Say:  "This is ours, the impossible," and silence
    Will give consent it is ours alone.

The impossible has wild-cat claws
    Which you would rather meet and die
Than commit love to time's curative venom
    And break our oath; for so would I.

Loving True, Flying Blind (Robert Graves)

How often have I said before
That no soft 'if,' no 'either-or,'
Can keep my obdurate male mind
From loving true and flying blind? --

Which, though deranged beyond all cure
Of temporal reason, knows for sure
That timeless magic first began
When woman bared her soul to man.

Be bird, be blossom, comet, star,
Be paradisal gates ajar,
But still, as woman, bear you must
With who alone endures your trust.

A Dream of Frances Speedwell (Robert Graves)

I fell in love at my first evening party.
You were tall and fair, just seventeen perhaps
Talking to my two sisters.  I kept silent
And never since have loved a tall fair girl,
Until last night in the small windy hours
When, floating up an unfamiliar staircase
And into someone's bedroom, there I found her
Posted beside the window in half-light
Wearing that same white dress with lacy sleeves.
She backoned.  I came closer.  We embraced
Inseparably until the dream faded.
Her eyes shone clear and blue . . .

Who was it, though, impersonated you?

Love Letter  (Richard Outram)

Still sheathed in ardour, Sweetheart, in this night,
Though continents apart, I would not write;
The body of my thought can never be,
However subtle, half the mystery
Of one embrace; and naked phrases prove
Pale triths to those, who sometime died in Love
Beyond all bonds, all grasp of given Names,
To surface speechless within living flames;
Reduced to words, you cannot understand
My crabbed, distracted, unfamilliar hand,
Except that you might read beteen these lines,
Where tongue to touch you never will be found,
And see a white sheet as our common ground.

When You Are Old  (W. B. Yeats)

When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;

How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beuty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;

And bending down beside the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.