Poet and Muse diptych of a wax tablet; the inscription has not survived, so there can be no way to identify the writer for whom it was made. In the literature that has accumulated about this diptych, various prominent figures have been offered as candidates: Ausonius, Boethius, and Claudian, and even earlier figures, like Ennius and Seneca, with whom the donor wished to be associated The muse represented is Erato, muse of lyric poetry, with her usual attribute, the cithara, which she rests upon an ornately fluted column. The poet on the facing panel is seated, roused from his contemplation by the inspiring presence
The White Goddess "The Golden Fleece". He then left the book to focus on "King Jesus," a historical novel about the life of Jesus. Returning to "The Roebuck in the Thicket", he renamed it "The Three-Fold Muse", before finishing it and retitling it as "The White Goddess". In January 1946 he sent it to the publishers, and in May 1948 it was published in the UK, and in June 1948 in the US, as "The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth". Graves described "The White Goddess" as "a historical grammar of the language of poetic myth". The book draws from the