The Pier-glass

Robert Graves's poems move through haunted interiors, rural landscapes, and biblical legend with a voice that is at once lyrical, unsettling, and sharply dramatic. Mirrors, keepsakes, flowers, storms, and ruined houses become charged symbols of memory, grief, desire, and the hard search for meaning, as in "The Treasure Box," "The Pier-glass," and "The Magical Picture," where domestic objects open onto private history, moral reckoning, and communal wonder. Other poems turn inward to conscience and suffering—"The Gnat," "Down," and "Incubus" trace torment, fear, and bodily collapse—while "The Finding of Love," "The Patchwork Bonnet," and "The Hills of May" find beauty in love, craft, and the natural world. Graves also ranges into mythic and biblical territory, from "Saul of Tarsus" and "Distant Smoke" to the darkly comic betrayal of "The Coronation Murder," blending gothic atmosphere, satire, and elemental force. The collection as a whole is rich in emotional tension, dramatic storytelling, and the uneasy energy of destruction and renewal. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.