Whipperginny

Whipperginny is a richly varied collection in which Robert Graves moves from myth and satire to lyric intimacy, philosophical wit, and dreamlike vision. Across its shifting moods, the poems register war neurosis, childhood memory, love's contradictions, and a growing turn toward detachment, religion, psychology, and self-knowledge. The title sequence opens a landscape of imaginative play and emotional distance, where card games, battlefield echoes, folklore, and symbolic creatures such as the unicorn and white doe become emblems of desire, pursuit, and unattainable beauty. As the book develops, Graves blends tender love lyrics with sharp meditations on age, fidelity, rivalry, and the difficulty of seeing clearly. He recasts saints, heroes, and biblical figures with ironic force, deflating grandeur through comic reversals, while also creating haunting dream sequences of blocked longing, artistic aspiration, and spiritual hunger. Later poems widen into satire and epigram, imagining lands of paradox and a Hell that feels less remote than everyday life. Yet the collection also offers pastoral calm, nursery-like simplicity, and moments of forgiveness, suggesting that its true terrain is a shifting world of conflict, illusion, and hard-won grace. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.