Explore "On the Poet's Birth" by Robert Graves on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A page, a huntsman, and a priest of God, / Her lovers, met in jealous contrariety, / Equally claiming the sole parenthood / Of him the perfect crown of their variety. / Then, whom to admit, herself she could not tell; / That always was her fate, she loved too well.
"But, many-fathered little one," she said, / "Whether of high or low, of smooth or rough, / Here is your mother whom you brought to bed. / Acknowledge only me, be this enough, / For such as worship after shall be told / A white dove sired you or a rain of gold. "