Edwin Arlington Robinson

Now in a thought, now in a shadowed word, Now in a voice that thrills eternity, Ever there comes an onward phrase to me Of some transcendent music I have heard; No piteous thing

A flying word from here and there Had sown the name at which we sneered, To be reviled and then revered: A presence to be loved and feared We cannot hide it, or deny

(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell) No sound of any storm that shakes Old island walls with older seas Comes here where now September makes An island in a sea of trees. Between the sunlight and

Oh for a poet-for a beacon bright To rift this changless glimmer of dead gray; To spirit back the Muses, long astray, And flush Parnassus with a newer light; To put these little sonnet-men

Never was there a man much uglier In eyes of other women, or more grim: “The Lord has filled her chalice to the brim, So let us pray she’s a philosopher,” They said; and

Some are the brothers of all humankind, And own them, whatsoever their estate; And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind With enmity for man’s unguarded fate. For some there is a music all

For what we owe to other days, Before we poisoned him with praise, May we who shrank to find him weak Remember that he cannot speak. For envy that we may recall, And for

“Whether all towns and all who live in them – So long as they be somewhere in this world That we in our complacency call ours – Are more or less the same, I

Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore The children-Jane, Sylvester, and Young George – Were eyes and ears; for there was only one Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, And she was in

Once, when I wandered in the woods alone, An old man tottered up to me and said, “Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made For Amaryllis.” There was in the tone

There is a fenceless garden overgrown With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves; And once, among the roses and the sheaves, The Gardener and I were there alone. He led me to

Once there was a cabin here, and once there was a man; And something happened here before my memory began. Time has made the two of them the fuel of one flame And all

Because he puts the compromising chart Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid; Because he counts the price that you have paid For innocence, and counts it from the start, You loathe him.

“Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing-and what of it? Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? If I were not their father and

I heard one who said: “Verily, What word have I for children here? Your Dollar is your only Word, The wrath of it your only fear. “You build it altars tall enough To make

In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole A wise old age anticipate, Desiring, with his pipe and bowl, No Khan’s extravagant estate. No crown annoyed his honest head, No fiddlers three were called or

No longer torn by what she knows And sees within the eyes of others, Her doubts are when the daylight goes, Her fears are for the few she bothers. She tells them it is

NOTE.-The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement

The man Flammonde, from God knows where, With firm address and foreign air With news of nations in his talk And something royal in his walk, With glint of iron in his eyes, But

I say no more for Clavering Than I should say of him who fails To bring his wounded vessel home When reft of rudder and of sails; I say no more than I should

Blue in the west the mountain stands, And through the long twilight Vickery sits with folded hands, And Vickery’s eyes are bright. Bright, for he knows what no man else On earth as yet

(ROOSEVELT) He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion… And the men of the city said

He took a frayed hat from his head, And “Peace on Earth” was what he said. “A morsel out of what you’re worth, And there we have it: Peace on Earth. Not much, although

I cannot find my way: there is no star In all the shrouded heavens anywhere; And there is not a whisper in the air Of any living voice but one so far That I

Slowly I smoke and hug my knee, The while a witless masquerade Of things that only children see Floats in a mist of light and shade: They pass, a flimsy cavalcade, And with a

Whenever I go by there nowadays And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass, The torn blue curtains and the broken glass, I seem to be afraid of the old place; And

There be two men of all mankind That I should like to know about; But search and question where I will, I cannot ever find them out. Melchizedek he praised the Lord, And gave

Small knowledge have we that by knowledge met May not some day be quaint as any told In almagest or chronicle of old, Whereat we smile because we are as yet The last-though not

Ten years together without yet a cloud, They seek each other’s eyes at intervals Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls For love’s obliteration of the crowd. Serenely and perennially endowed And bowered as

No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came, There was her place. No matter what men said, No matter what she was; living or dead, Faithful or not, he loved her all the

I Partly to think, more to be left alone, George Annandale said something to his friends – A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough To suit their funeral gaze-and went upstairs; And

A melanholy face Charles Carville had, But not so melancholy as it seemed, When once you knew him, for his mouth redeemed His insufficient eyes, forever sad: In them there was no life-glimpse, good

I While I stood listening, discreetly dumb, Lorraine was having the last word with me: ВЂњI know, ” she said, “I know it, but you see Some creatures are born fortunate, and some Are

“We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. You may serve us if you must, and you shall

I As long as Fame’s imperious music rings Will poets mock it with crowned words august; And haggard men will clamber to be kings As long as Glory weighs itself in dust. II Drink

Blessed with a joy that only she Of all alive shall ever know, She wears a proud humility For what it was that willed it so – That her degree should be so great

Whenever Richard Cory went down town, We people on the pavement looked at him: He was a gentleman from sole to crown, Clean favored, and imperially slim. And he was always quietly arrayed, And

I THE EXPLANATION “You thought we knew,” she said, “but we were wrong. This we can say, the rest we do not say; Nor do I let you throw yourself away Because you love

Two brothers, Oakes and Oliver, Two gentle men as ever were, Would roam no longer, but abide In Linndale, where their fathers died, And each would be a gardener. “Now first we fence the

Pamela was too gentle to deceive Her roses. “Let the men stay where they are,” She said, “and if Apollo’s avatar Be one of them, I shall not have to grieve.” And so she

A vanished house that for an hour I knew By some forgotten chance when I was young Had once a glimmering window overhung With honeysuckle wet with evening dew. Along the path tall dusky

“No, Mary, there was nothing-not a word. Nothing, and always nothing. Go again Yourself, and he may listen-or at least Look up at you, and let you see his eyes. I might as well

“There, but for the grace of God, goes…” There is a question that I ask, And ask again: What hunger was half-hidden by the mask That he wore then? There was a word for

My northern pines are good enough for me, But there’s a town my memory uprears – A town that always like a friend appears, And always in the sunrise by the sea. And over

Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, Where trespassers, whatever their degree, Were soon frowned out again, was looking off Across the clover when he said to me: “My green hill yonder, where the sun

Ye gods that have a home beyond the world, Ye that have eyes for all man’s agony, Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen,- Look with a just regard, And with

Long warned of many terrors more severe To scorch him than hell’s engines could awaken, He scanned again, too far to be so near, The fearful seat no man had ever taken. So many

The man who cloaked his bitterness within This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries, God never gave to look with common eyes Upon a world of anguish and of sin: His brother was the branded

At first I thought there was a superfine Persuasion in his face; but the free flow That filled it when he stopped and cried, “Hollo!” Shone joyously, and so I let it shine. He

When these graven lines you see, Traveller, do not pity me; Though I be among the dead, Let no mournful word be said. Children that I leave behind, And their children, all were kind;

Strange that I did not know him then. That friend of mine! I did not even show him then One friendly sign; But cursed him for the ways he had To make me see

Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine With him one day; and after soup and meat, And all the other things there were to eat, Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine

The Lord Apollo, who has never died, Still holds alone his immemorial reign, Supreme in an impregnable domain That with his magic he has fortified; And though melodious multitudes have tried In ecstasy, in

Down by the flash of the restless water The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; Laughing at life and the world they sought her, And out she swung to the silvering bay.

“They called it Annandale-and I was there To flourish, to find words, and to attend: Liar, physician, hypocrite, and friend, I watched him; and the sight was not so fair As one or two

Where a faint light shines alone, Dwells a Demon I have known. Most of you had better say “The Dark House,” and go your way. Do not wonder if I stay. For I know

“Where’s the need of singing now?” Smooth your brow, Momus, and be reconciled. For king Kronos is a child Child and father, Or god rather, And all gods are wild. “Who reads Byron any

Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand, He wakes lost echoes from song’s classic shore, And brings their crystal cadence back once more To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land Where

He knocked, and I beheld him at the door A vision for the gods to verify. “What battered ancient is this,” thought I, “And when, if ever, did we meet before?” But ask him

Faint white pillars that seem to fade As you look from here are the first one sees Of his house where it hides and dies in a shade Of beeches and oaks and hickory

There is a drear and lonely tract of hell From all the common gloom removed afar: A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. I

She fears him, and will always ask What fated her to choose him; She meets in his engaging mask All reason to refuse him. But what she meets and what she fears Are less

Through an ascending emptiness of night, Leaving the flesh and complacent mind Together in their suffciency behind, The soul of man went up to a far height; And where those others would have had

Long after there were none of them alive About the place-where there is now no place But a walled hole where fruitless vines embrace Their parent skeletons that yet survive In evil thorns-none of

Alone, remote, nor witting where I went, I found an altar builded in a dream – A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam So swift, so searching, and so eloquent Of upward promise,

I-THE LURE No, no,-forget your Cricket and your Ant, For I shall never set my name to theirs That now bespeak the very sons and heirs Incarnate of Queen Gossip and King Cant. The

She’d look upon us, if she could, As hard as Rhadamanthus would; Yet one may see,-who sees her face, Her crown of silver and of lace, Her mystical serene address Of age alloyed with

Vengeful across the cold November moors, Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek, Reverberant through lonely corridors. The old man heard it; and he

I saw by looking in his eyes That they remembered everything; And this was how I came to know That he was here, still wandering. For though the figure and the scene Were never

Christmas was in the air and all was well With him, but for a few confusing flaws In divers of God’s images. Because A friend of his would neither buy nor sell, Was he

Up from the street and the crowds that went, Morning and midnight, to and fro, Still was the room where his days he spent, And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

I Just as I wonder at the twofold screen Of twisted innocence that you would plait For eyes that uncourageously await The coming of a kingdom that has been, So do I wonder what

I A HAPPY MAN (Carphyllides) When these graven lines you see, Traveler, do not pity me; Though I be among the dead, Let no mournful word be said. Children that I leave behind, And

You are a friend then, as I make it out, Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us Will put an ass’s head in Fairyland As he would add a shilling to more shillings,

The ghost of Ninon would be sorry now To laugh at them, were she to see them here, So brave and so alert for learning how To fence with reason for another year. Age

If ever I am old, and all alone, I shall have killed one grief, at any rate; For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait Much longer for the sheaves that I

Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose. A miser was he, with a miser’s nose, And eyes like little dollars in the dark. His thin, pinched mouth

I pray you not, Leuconoë, to pore With unpermitted eyes on what may be Appointed by the gods for you and me, Nor on Chaldean figures any more. ‘T were infinitely better to implore

You Eyes, you large and all-inquiring Eyes. That look so dubiously into me, And are not satisfied with what you see, Tell me the worst and let us have no lies: Tell me the

Shall I never make him look at me again? I look at him, I look my life at him, I tell him all I know the way to tell, But there he stays the

There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow, There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget; There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, There

Because he was a butcher and thereby Did earn an honest living (and did right), I would not have you think that Reuben Bright Was any more a brute than you or I; For

OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN TO the lore of no manner of men Would his vision have yielded When he found what will never again From his vision be shielded,- Though he paid with as

Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows, Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will,- But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still With the sure strength that fearless truth endows. In spite

They met, and overwhelming her distrust With penitence, he praised away her fear; They married, and Job gave him half a year To wreck the temple, as we knew he must. He fumbled hungrily

Never mind the day we left, or the day the women clung to us; All we need now is the last way they looked at us. Never mind the twelve men there amid the

We go no more to Calverly’s, For there the lights are few and low; And who are there to see by them, Or what they see, we do not know. Poor strangers of another

We parted where the old gas-lamp still burned Under the wayside maple and walked on, Into the dark, as we had always done; And I, no doubt, if he had not returned, Might yet