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 5
Among the favored 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, 10
And like to none that she has known
Of other women’s other sons, —
The firm fruition of her need,
He shines anointed; and he blurs
Her vision, till it seems indeed 15
A sacrilege to call him hers.
She fears a little for so much
Of what is best, and hardly dares
To think of him as one to touch
With aches, indignities, and cares; 20
She sees him rather at the goal,
Still shining; and her dream foretells
The proper shining of a soul
Where nothing ordinary dwells.
Perchance a canvass of the town 25
Would find him far from flags and shouts,
And leave him only the renown
Of many smiles and many doubts;
Perchance the crude and common tongue
Would havoc strangely with his worth; 30
But she, with innocence unwrung,
Would read his name around the earth.
And others, knowing how this youth
Would shine, if love could make him great,
When caught and tortured for the truth 35
Would only writhe and hesitate;
While she, arranging for his days
What centuries could not fulfill,
Transmutes him with her faith and praise,
And has him shining where she will. 40
She crowns him with her gratefulness,
And says again that life is good;
And should the gift of God be less
In him than in her motherhood,
His fame, though vague, will not be small, 45
As upward through her dream he fares,
Half clouded with a crimson fall
Of roses thrown on marble stairs.
The Clinging Vine
“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 5
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; 10
The moon and stars and ocean
Will envy my command;
No creature could be stiller
In any kind of place
Than I … No, I’ll not kill her; 15
Her death is in her face.
“Be happy while she has it,
For she’ll not have it long;
A year, and then you’ll pass it,
Preparing a new song. 20
And I’m a fool for prating
Of what a year may bring,
When more like her are waiting
For more like you to sing.
“You mock me with denial, 25
You mean to call me hard?
You see no room for trial
When all my doors are barred?
You say, and you’d say dying,
That I dream what I know; 30
And sighing, and denying,
You’d hold my hand and go.
“You scowl — and I don’t wonder;
I spoke too fast again;
But you’ll forgive one blunder, 35
For you are like most men:
You are, — or so you’ve told me,
So many mortal times,
That heaven ought not to hold me
Accountable for crimes. 40
“Be calm? Was I unpleasant?
Then I’ll be more discreet,
And grant you, for the present,
The balm of my defeat:
What she, with all her striving, 45
Could not have brought about,
You’ve done. Your own contriving
Has put the last light out.
“If she were the whole story,
If worse were not behind, 50
I’d creep with you to glory,
Believing I was blind;
I’d creep, and go on seeming
To be what I despise.
You laugh, and say I’m dreaming, 55
And all your laughs are lies.
“Are women mad? A few are,
And if it’s true you say —
If most men are as you are —
We’ll all be mad some day. 60
Be calm — and let me finish;
There’s more for you to know.
I’ll talk while you diminish,
And listen while you grow.
“There was a man who married 65
Because he couldn’t see;
And all his days he carried
The mark of his degree.
But you — you came clear-sighted,
And found truth in my eyes; 70
And all my wrongs you’ve righted
With lies, and lies, and lies.
“You’ve killed the last assurance
That once would have me strive
To rouse an old endurance 75
That is no more alive.
It makes two people chilly
To say what we have said,
But you — you’ll not be silly
And wrangle for the dead. 80
“You don’t? You never wrangle?
Why scold then, — or complain?
More words will only mangle
What you’ve already slain.
Your pride you can’t surrender? 85
My name — for that you fear?
Since when were men so tender,
And honor so severe?
“No more — I’ll never bear it.
I’m going. I’m like ice. 90
My burden? You would share it?
Forbid the sacrifice!
Forget so quaint a notion,
And let no more be told;
For moon and stars and ocean 95
And you and I are cold.”
Cassandra
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 5
To make you see, but you are blind;
You cannot leave it long enough
To look before you or behind.
“When Reason beckons you to pause,
You laugh and say that you know best; 10
But what it is you know, you keep
As dark as ingots in a chest.
“You laugh and answer, ‘We are young;
O leave us now, and let us grow.’ —
Not asking how much more of this 15
Will Time endure or Fate bestow.
“Because a few complacent years
Have made your peril of your pride,
Think you that you are to go on
Forever pampered and untried? 20
“What lost eclipse of history,
What bivouac of the marching stars,
Has given the sign for you to see
Millenniums and last great wars?
“What unrecorded overthrow 25
Of all the world has ever known,
Or ever been, has made itself
So plain to you, and you alone?
“Your Dollar, Dove and Eagle make
A Trinity that even you 30
Rate higher than you rate yourselves;
&
nbsp; It pays, it flatters, and it’s new.
“And though your very flesh and blood
Be what your Eagle eats and drinks,
You’ll praise him for the best of birds, 35
Not knowing what the Eagle thinks.
“The power is yours, but not the sight;
You see not upon what you tread;
You have the ages for your guide,
But not the wisdom to be led. 40
“Think you to tread forever down
The merciless old verities?
And are you never to have eyes
To see the world for what it is?
“Are you to pay for what you have 45
With all you are?” — No other word
We caught, but with a laughing crowd
Moved on. None heeded, and few heard.
John Gorham
“TELL me what you’re doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when you’re not;
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.” —
“I’m over here to tell you what the moon already 5
May have said or maybe shouted ever since a year ago;
I’m over here to tell you what you are, Jane Wayland,
And to make you rather sorry, I should say, for being so.” —
“Tell me what you’re saying to me now, John Gorham,
Or you’ll never see as much of me as ribbons any more; 10
I’ll vanish in as many ways as I have toes and fingers,
And you’ll not follow far for one where flocks have been before.” —
“I’m sorry now you never saw the flocks, Jane Wayland,
But you’re the one to make of them as many as you need.
And then about the vanishing. It’s I who mean to vanish; 15
And when I’m here no longer you’ll be done with me indeed.” —
“That’s a way to tell me what I am, John Gorham!
How am I to know myself until I make you smile?
Try to look as if the moon were making faces at you,
And a little more as if you meant to stay a little while.” — 20
“You are what it is that over rose-blown gardens
Make a pretty flutter for a season in the sun;
You are what it is that with a mouse, Jane Wayland,
Catches him and lets him go and eats him up for fun.” —
“Sure I never took you for a mouse, John Gorham; 25
All you say is easy, but so far from being true
That I wish you wouldn’t ever be again the one to think so;
For it isn’t eats and butterflies that I would be to you.” —
“All your little animals are in one picture —
One I’ve had before me since a year ago to-night; 30
And the picture where they live will be of you, Jane Wayland,
Till you find a way to kill them or to keep them out of sight.” —
“Won’t you ever see me as I am, John Gorham,
Leaving out the foolishness and all I never meant?
Somewhere in me there’s a woman, if you know the way to find her. 35
Will you like me any better if I prove it and repent?” —
“I doubt if I shall ever have the time, Jane Wayland;
And I dare say all this moonlight lying round us might as well
Fall for nothing on the shards of broken urns that are forgotten,
As on two that have no longer much of anything to tell.” 40
Stafford’s Cabin
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 we have of them is now a legend and a name.
All I have to say is what an old man said to me, 5
And that would seem to be as much as there will ever be.
“Fifty years ago it was we found it where it sat.” —
And forty years ago it was old Archibald said that.
“An apple tree that’s yet alive saw something, I suppose,
Of what it was that happened there, and what no mortal knows. 10
Some one on the mountain heard far off a master shriek,
And then there was a light that showed the way for men to seek.
“We found it in the morning with an iron bar behind,
And there were chains around it; but no search could ever find,
Either in the ashes that were left, or anywhere, 15
A sign to tell of who or what had been with Stafford there.
“Stafford was a likely man with ideas of his own —
Though I could never like the kind that likes to live alone;
And when you met, you found his eyes were always on your shoes,
As if they did the talking when he asked you for the news. 20
“That’s all, my son. Were I to talk for half a hundred years
I’d never clear away from there the cloud that never clears.
We buried what was left of it, — the bar, too, and the chains;
And only for the apple tree there’s nothing that remains.”
Forty years ago it was I heard the old man say, 25
“That’s all, my son.” — And here again I find the place to-day,
Deserted and told only by the tree that knows the most,
And overgrown with golden-rod as if there were no ghost.
Hillcrest
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 the shade 5
A man may learn till he forgets
The roaring of a world remade,
And all his ruins and regrets;
And if he still remembers here
Poor fights he may have won or lost, — 10
If he be ridden with the fear
Of what some other fight may cost, —
If, eager to confuse too soon,
What he has known with what may be,
He reads a planet out of tune 15
For cause of his jarred harmony, —
If here he venture to unroll
His index of adagios,
And he be given to console
Humanity with what he knows, — 20
He may by contemplation learn
A little more than what he knew,
And even see great oaks return
To acorns out of which they grew.
He may, if he but listen well, 25
Through twilight and the silence here,
Be told what there are none may tell
To vanity’s impatient ear;
And he may never dare again
Say what awaits him, or be sure 30
What sunlit labyrinth of pain
He may not enter and endure.
Who knows to-day from yesterday
May learn to count no thing too strange:
Love builds of what Time takes away, 35
Till Death itself is less than Change.
Who sees enough in his duress
May go as far as dreams have gone;
Who sees a little may do less
Than many who are blind have done; 40
Who sees unchastened here the soul
Triumphant has no other sight
Than has a child who sees the whole
World radiant with his own delight.
Far journeys and hard wandering 45
Await him in whose crude surmise
Peace, like a mask, hides everything
That is and has been from his eyes;
And all his wisdom is unfound,
Or like a web that error weaves 50
On airy
looms that have a sound
No louder now than falling leaves.
Old King Cole
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, 5
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, 10
He took no other for a wife,
Nor sighed for any that he saw;
And if he doubted his two sons,
And heirs, Alexis and Evander,
He might have been as doubtful once 15
Of Robert Burns and Alexander.
Alexis, in his early youth,
Began to steal — from old and young.
Likewise Evander, and the truth
Was like a bad taste on his tongue. 20
Born thieves and liars, their affair
Seemed only to be tarred with evil —
The most insufferable pair
Of scamps that ever cheered the devil.
The world went on, their fame went on, 25
And they went on — from bad to worse;
Till, goaded hot with nothing done,
And each accoutred with a curse,
The friends of Old King Cole, by twos,
And fours, and sevens, and elevens, 30
Pronounced unalterable views
Of doings that were not of heaven’s.
And having learned again whereby
Their baleful zeal had come about,
King Cole met many a wrathful eye 35
So kindly that its wrath went out —
Or partly out. Say what they would,
He seemed the more to court their candor;
But never told what kind of good
Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson Page 2
