Edwin Arlington Robinson Poems
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by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 much of his life
As a nun could have given,
And to-night would have been as a knife,
Devil-drawn, devil-driven.
For to-night, with his flame-weary eyes
On...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Although I saw before me there the face
Of one whom I had honored among men
The least, and on regarding him again
Would not have had him in another place,
He fitted with an unfamiliar grace
The coffin where I could not see him then
As I had seen him and appraised him when
I deemed him unessential to...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
(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 unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?—Judges, 14.
The palms of Mammon have disowned
The gift of our complacency;...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 needed;
For two disastrous heirs instead
Made music more than ever three did.
Bereft of her with whom his life
Was harmony without a flaw,
He took...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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
And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign
For me to choose at all, he took the draught
Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed
It off,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
“Be calm? And was I frantic?
You’ll have me laughing soon.
I’m calm as this Atlantic,
And quiet as the moon;
I may have spoken faster
Than once, in other days;
For I’ve no more a master,
And now—‘Be calm,’ he says.
“Fear not, fear no commotion,—
I’ll be as rocks and sand;
The moon and stars and ocean
Will envy...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Think not, because I wonder where you fled,
That I would lift a pin to see you there;
You may, for me, be prowling anywhere,
So long as you show not your little head:
No dark and evil story of the dead
Would leave you less pernicious or less fair—
Not even Lilith, with her famous hair;
And Lilith was the devil,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 say
Of any other one who sees
Too far for guidance of to-day,
Too near for the eternities.
I think of him as I should think...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The doubt you fought so long
The cynic net you cast,
The tyranny, the wrong,
The ruin, they are past;
And here you are at last,
Your blood no longer vexed.
The coffin has you fast,
The clod will have you next.
But fear you not the clod,
Nor ever doubt the grave:
The roses and the sod
Will not forswear...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 no sight
Or sense of else than terror for the blind,
Soul met the Will, and was again consigned
To the surpreme illusion which is right.
"And what goes on up there," the...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Two men came out of Shannon's, having known
The faces of each other for so long
As they had listened there to an old song,
Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone
By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown
Too many times and with a wing too strong
To save himself; and so done heavy wrong
To more frail elements than his alone.
Slowly away they went, leaving...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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
Among the favoured of the Lord
That she may scarcely bear the weight
Of her bewildering reward.
As one apart, immune, alone,
Or featured for the shining ones,
And like to none that she has...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
O’Leary was a poet—for a while:
He sang of many ladies frail and fair,
The rolling glory of their golden hair,
And emperors extinguished with a smile.
They foiled his years with many an ancient wile,
And if they limped, O’Leary didn’t care:
He turned them loose and had them everywhere,
Undoing saints and senates with their guile.
But this...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
“Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
D’ye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
That have another king more fierce than ours?
Or think ye that if ye look far enough
And hard enough into the feathery west
Ye’ll have a glimmer of the...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Through the shine, through the rain
We have shared the day’s load;
To the old march again
We have tramped the long road;
We have laughed, we have cried,
And we’ve tossed the King’s crown;
We have fought, we have died,
And we’ve trod the day down.
So it’s lift the old song
Ere the night flies again,
Where the road...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 it, somehow, there seems to be
A downward flash of something new and fierce,
That ever strives to clear, but never clears
The dimness of a charmed...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 dahlias grew,
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung
Ferociously; and over me, among
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.
Somewhere within there were dim presences
Of days that hovered and of years...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
The master-songs are ended, and the man
That sang them is a name. And so is God
A name; and so is love, and life, and death,
And everything. But we, who are too blind
To read what we have written, or what faith
Has written for us, do not understand:
We only blink, and wonder.
Last night it was the song that was the man,
But...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 said his name was Fleming Helphenstine,
But be that as it may;—I only know
He talked of this and that and So-and-So,
And laughed and chaffed like any friend of mine.
But soon,...Read more of this...
by
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 by soft hands dulcimered,
No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory,
But a glad strain of some vast harmony
That no brief mortal touch has ever stirred....Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 same.
Shall I never make him speak one word to me?
Shall I never make him say enough to show
My heart if he be glad?...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
From the Past and Unavailing
Out of cloudland we are steering:
After groping, after fearing,
Into starlight we come trailing,
And we find the stars are true.
Still, O comrade, what of you?
You are gone, but we are sailing,
And the old ways are all new.
For the Lost and Unreturning
We have drifted, we have waited;
Uncommanded and unrated,...Read more of this...
by
Edwin Arlington Robinson
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 heard, perforce,
Words out of lips that were no more to speak—
Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek
Like dead, remembered footsteps...Read more of this...