The White Goddess

In his book The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth, Graves defines the theme he crafts in many of his poems. He writes:

The Theme, briefly, is the antique story [...] of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of the God of the Waxing Year; the central chapters concern the God’s losing battle with the God of the Waning Year for love of the capricious and all-powerful Threefold Goddess, their mother, bride, and layer-out (Graves, Robert. The White Goddess: A Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth. 1948. Faber & Faber, 24).

The waxing and waning year refers to the cycle of the seasons, a longer cycle than the related monthly waxing and waning of the moon. In Graves’s poem “The White Goddess,” the changing seasons and threefold nature of the Goddess are emphasized.

Aspects of all of the seasons can be found in “The White Goddess.” There is a direct discussion of “Spring” (Line 15), which is capitalized by the poet to emphasize its importance, and “November” (Line 18) clearly indicates autumn in the northern hemisphere. There are also more indirect references to summer and winter; the “volcano’s” (Line 9) heat represents the heat of summer, and the “pack ice” (Line 10) represents winter.