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Robert Graves - Sullen Moods
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    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 walks forbidden ways,
    Breaking the ties that hold 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;
    No, 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.
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