Robert Graves, whom I mentioned in class, apart from writing on the War, was one of the greatest modern experts in Classical Antiquity and Mythology and, above all, an extraordinary poet of love.

He was very influencial in a point of my life. He claimed to write in what he described as a special state of consciousness, in which time stopped -or, rather, worked in another dimension. When I was 19 years old, I read him and I was convinced he was telling the truth. After being educated with the Jesuits along the most respectable scholastic and humanistic lines, I discovered that reality and the human being were far more wonderful than mere racionality.

Here are two poems I have long known by heart.

She Tells Her Love

She tells her love while half asleep,
In the dark hours,
With half-words whispered low:
As Earth stirs in her winter sleep
And put out grass and flowers
Despite the snow,
Despite the falling snow.

Diamond and dew-drop

The difference between you and her
(whom I to you did once prefer)
Is clear enough to settle:
She like a diamond shone, but you
Shine like an early drop of dew
Poised on a red rose petal.

The dew-drop carries in its eye
Mountain and forest, sea and sky,
With every change of weather;
Contrariwise, a diamond splits
The prospect into idle bits
That none can piece together