Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE PIER-GLASS, by ROBERT RANKE GRAVES


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE PIER-GLASS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Lost manor where I walk continually
Last Line: True life, natural breath; not this phantasma.
Subject(s): Mirrors


Lost manor where I walk continually
A ghost, though yet in woman's flesh and blood.
Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers
And gliding steadfast down your corridors
I come by nightly custom to this room,
And even on sultry afternoons I come
Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory.

Empty, unless for a huge bed of state
Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry
(A puppet theatre where malignant fancy
Peoples the wings with fear.) At my right hand
A raveled bell-pull hangs in readiness
To summon me from attic glooms above
Service of elder ghosts; here, at my left,
A sullen pier-glass, cracked from side to side,
Scorns to the present the face (as do new mirrors)
With a lying flush, but it shows melancholy
And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors.

Is there no life, nothing but the thin shadow
And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat
Rasping a crust? Or the window-pane
No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider?
The windows frame a prospect of cold skies
Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation --
Abstract, confusing welter. Face about,
Peer rather in the glass once more, take note
Of self, the grey lips and the long hair disheveled,
Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's love
Give me one token that there still abides
Remote -- beyond this island mystery,
So be it only this side Hope, somewhere,
In streams, on sun-warm mountain pasturage --
True life, natural breath; not this phantasma.





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