Explore "Old Wives' Tales" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Were the tales they told absurd, / Random tags for a child's ear? / Soon I mocked at all I heard, / Though with cause indeed for fear.
Of the mermaids' doleful game / In deep water I heard tell, / Of lofty dragons blowing flame, / Of the hornèd fiend of Hell.
Now I have met the mermaid kin / And find them bound by natural laws, / They have neither tail nor fin, / But are the deadlier for that cause.
Dragons have no darting tongues, / Teeth saw-edged nor rattling scales, / No fire issues from their lungs, / Poison has not slimed their tails.
But they are creatures of dark air, / Unsubstantial tossing forms, / Thunderclaps of man's despair / In mid whirl of mental storms.
And there's a true and only fiend / Worse than prophets prophesy, / Whose full powers to hurt are screened / Lest the race of man should die.
Ever in vain may courage plot / The dragon's death with shield and sword, / Or love abjure the mermaid grot, / Or faith be fixed in one blest word.
Mermaids will not be denied / Of our last enduring shame, / The dragon flaunts his unpierced hide, / The fiend makes laughter with God's Name.