The White Goddess

“The White Goddess” by Robert Graves was published in his 1951 book Poems and Satires. Graves also published a prose book The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth in 1948, and the poem of the same name was part of a period in Graves’s work where the titular figure became central to his artistic vision (1939-1959). “The White Goddess” comes somewhat late in Graves’s long poetic career; he began publishing books of poetry in 1916, and the last edition of his collected poems that was published in his lifetime was released in 1975.

“The White Goddess,” a free-verse poem, exemplifies Graves’s theme of the Goddess myth—the divine reasoning for the cycle of the seasons and the threefold nature of the Goddess. It contrasts Goddess worshippers with those who oppress them based on their beliefs and explores how human women are embodiments of the Goddess.

Poet Biography

Robert Graves was born in 1895 in Wimbledon, England. His parents were Gaelic scholar and poet Alfred Perceval Graves and Amalie von Ranke Graves, and he had nine siblings. Graves fought in World War I and was reported as being killed in the Battle of the Somme in 1916. However, despite severe injury, he lived a long and successful life after the War.