Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson
Page 7
A vision answering a faith unshaken,
An easy trust assumed of easy trials,
A sick negation born of weak denials, 185
A crazed abhorrence of an old condition,
A blind attendance on a brief ambition, —
Whatever stayed him or derided him,
His way was even as ours;
And we, with all our wounds and all our powers, 190
Must each await alone at his own height
Another darkness or another light;
And there, of our poor self dominion reft,
If inference and reason shun
Hell, Heaven, and Oblivion, 195
May thwarted will (perforce precarious,
But for our conservation better thus)
Have no misgiving left
Of doing yet what here we leave undone?
Or if unto the last of these we cleave, 200
Believing or protesting we believe
In such an idle and ephemeral
Florescence of the diabolical, —
If, robbed of two fond old enormities,
Our being had no onward auguries, 205
What then were this great love of ours to say
For launching other lives to voyage again
A little farther into time and pain,
A little faster in a futile chase
For a kingdom and a power and a Race 210
That would have still in sight
A manifest end of ashes and eternal night?
Is this the music of the toys we shake
So loud, — as if there might be no mistake
Somewhere in our indomitable will? 215
Are we no greater than the noise we make
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go
Because our brains and bones and cartilage
Will have it so? 220
If this we say, then let us all be still
About our share in it, and live and die
More quietly thereby.
Where was he going, this man against the sky?
You know not, nor do I. 225
But this we know, if we know anything:
That we may laugh and fight and sing
And of our transience here make offering
To an orient Word that will not be erased,
Or, save in incommunicable gleams 230
Too permanent for dreams,
Be found or known.
No tonic and ambitious irritant
Of increase or of want
Has made an otherwise insensate waste 235
Of ages overthrown
A ruthless, veiled, implacable foretaste
Of other ages that are still to be
Depleted and rewarded variously
Because a few, by fate’s economy, 240
Shall seem to move the world the way it goes;
No soft evangel of equality,
Safe-cradled in a communal repose
That huddles into death and may at last
Be covered well with equatorial snows — 245
And all for what, the devil only knows —
Will aggregate an inkling to confirm
The credit of a sage or of a worm,
Or tell us why one man in five
Should have a care to stay alive 250
While in his heart he feels no violence
Laid on his humor and intelligence
When infant Science makes a pleasant face
And waves again that hollow toy, the Race;
No planetary trap where souls are wrought 255
For nothing but the sake of being caught
And sent again to nothing will attune
Itself to any key of any reason
Why man should hunger through another season
To find out why ‘twere better late than soon 260
To go away and let the sun and moon
And all the silly stars illuminate
A place for creeping things,
And those that root and trumpet and have wings,
And herd and ruminate, 265
Or dive and flash and poise in rivers and seas,
Or by their loyal tails in lofty trees
Hang screeching lewd victorious derision
Of man’s immortal vision.
Shall we, because Eternity records 270
Too vast an answer for the time-born words
We spell, whereof so many are dead that once
In our capricious lexicons
Were so alive and final, hear no more
The Word itself, the living word 275
That none alive has ever heard
Or ever spelt,
And few have ever felt
Without the fears and old surrenderings
And terrors that began 280
When Death let fall a feather from his wings
And humbled the first man?
Because the weight of our humility,
Wherefrom we gain
A little wisdom and much pain, 285
Falls here too sore and there too tedious,
Are we in anguish or complacency,
Not looking far enough ahead
To see by what mad couriers we are led
Along the roads of the ridiculous, 290
To pity ourselves and laugh at faith
And while we curse life bear it?
And if we see the soul’s dead end in death,
Are we to fear it?
What folly is here that has not yet a name 295
Unless we say outright that we are liars?
What have we seen beyond our sunset fires
That lights again the way by which we came?
Why pay we such a price, and one we give
So clamoringly, for each racked empty day 300
That leads one more last human hope away,
As quiet fiends would lead past our crazed eyes
Our children to an unseen sacrifice?
If after all that we have lived and thought,
All comes to Nought, — 305
If there be nothing after Now,
And we be nothing anyhow,
And we know that, — why live?
‘Twere sure but weaklings’ vain distress
To suffer dungeons where so many doors 310
Will open on the cold eternal shores
That look sheer down
To the dark tideless floods of Nothingness
Where all who know may drown.
The Children of the Night
TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER AND MOTHER
John Evereldown
“WHERE are you going to-night, to-night, —
Where are you going, John Evereldown?
There’s never the sign of a star in sight,
Nor a lamp that’s nearer than Tilbury Town.
Why do you stare as a dead man might? 5
Where are you pointing away from the light?
And where are you going to-night, to-night, —
Where are you going, John Evereldown?”
“Right through the forest, where none can see,
There’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town. 10
The men are asleep, — or awake, may be, —
But the women are calling John Evereldown.
Ever and ever they call for me,
And while they call can a man be free?
So right through the forest, where none can see, 15
There’s where I’m going, to Tilbury Town.”
“But why are you going so late, so late, —
Why are you going, John Evereldown?
Though the road be smooth and the way be straight,
There are two long leagues to Tilbury Town. 20
Come in by the fire, old man, and wait!
Why do you chatter out there by the gate?
And why are you going so late, so late, —
Why are you going, John Evere
ldown?”
“I follow the women wherever they call, — 25
That’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.
God knows if I pray to be done with it all,
But God is no friend to John Evereldown.
So the clouds may come and the rain may fall,
The shadows may creep and the dead men crawl, — 30
But I follow the women wherever they call,
And that’s why I’m going to Tilbury Town.”
Luke Havergal
GO to the western gate, Luke Havergal,
There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,
And in the twilight wait for what will come.
The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,
Like flying words, will strike you as they fall; 5
But go, and if you listen she will call.
Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal —
Luke Havergal.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies
To rift the fiery night that’s in your eyes; 10
But there, where western glooms are gathering,
The dark will end the dark, if anything:
God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,
And hell is more than half of paradise.
No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies — 15
In eastern skies.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this,
Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss
That flames upon your forehead with a glow
That blinds you to the way that you must go. 20
Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,
Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.
Out of a grave I come to tell you this —
To tell you this.
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal, 25
There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.
Go, for the winds are tearing them away, —
Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,
Nor any more to feel them as they fall;
But go, and if you trust her she will call. 30
There is the western gate, Luke Havergal —
Luke Havergal.
Three Quatrains
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 to the splendor of the unfulfilled, 5
Nor shudder for the revels that are done:
The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled,
The strings that Nero fingered are all gone.
III
We cannot crown ourselves with everything,
Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel: 10
No matter what we are, or what we sing,
Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.
An Old Story
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 5
To make me see
My envy of the praise he had
For praising me.
I would have rid the earth of him
Once, in my pride.… 10
I never knew the worth of him
Until he died.
Ballade by the Fire
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, 5
And with a weak, remindful glow,
The falling embers break and fade,
As one by one the phantoms go.
Then, with a melancholy glee
To think where once my fancy strayed, 10
I muse on what the years may be
Whose coming tales are all unsaid,
Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid
Within their shadowed niches, grow
By grim degrees to pick and spade, 15
As one by one the phantoms go.
But then, what though the mystic Three
Around me ply their merry trade? —
And Charon soon may carry me
Across the gloomy Stygian glade? — 20
Be up, my soul; nor be afraid
Of what some unborn year may show;
But mind your human debts are paid,
As one by one the phantoms go.
ENVOY
Life is the game that must be played: 25
This truth at least, good friends, we know;
So live and laugh, nor be dismayed
As one by one the phantoms go.
Ballade of Broken Flutes
(To A. T. Schumann)
IN dreams I crossed a barren land,
A land of ruin, far away;
Around me hung on every hand
A deathful stillness of decay;
And silent, as in bleak dismay 5
That song should thus forsaken be,
On that forgotten ground there lay
The broken flutes of Arcady.
The forest that was all so grand
When pipes and tabors had their sway 10
Stood leafless now, a ghostly band
Of skeletons in cold array.
A lonely surge of ancient spray
Told of an unforgetful sea,
But iron blows had hushed for aye 15
The broken flutes of Arcady.
No more by summer breezes fanned,
The place was desolate and gray;
But still my dream was to command
New life into that shrunken clay. 20
I tried it. And you scan to-day,
With uncommiserating glee,
The songs of one who strove to play
The broken flutes of Arcady.
ENVOY
So, Rock, I join the common fray, 25
To fight where Mammon may decree;
And leave, to crumble as they may,
The broken flutes of Arcady.
Her Eyes
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.
Year after year, with his dream shut fast, 5
He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim,
For the love that his brushes had earned at last,
And the whole world rang with the praise of him.
But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead,
Till his cheeks were sere and his hairs were gray. 10
“There are women enough, God knows,” he said …
“There are stars enough — when the sun’s away.”
Then he went back to the same still room
That had held his dream in the long ago,
When he buried his days in a nameless tomb, 15
And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.
And a passionate humor seized him there —
Seized him and held him until there grew
Like life on his canvas, glowing and fair,
A perilous face — and an angel’s too. 20
Angel and maiden, and all in one, —
All but the eyes. They were there, but yet
They seemed somehow like a soul half done.
What was the matter? Did God forget? …
But he wrought them at last with a skill so sure 25
That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman, —
With a gleam of heaven to make them pure,
And a glimmer of hell to make them human.
God never forgets. — And he worships her
There in that same still room of his, 30
&
nbsp; For his wife, and his constant arbiter
Of the world that was and the world that is.
And he wonders yet what her love could be
To punish him after that strife so grim;
But the longer he lives with her eyes to see, 35
The plainer it all comes back to him.
Two Men
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, 5
And gave some wine to Abraham;
But who can tell what else he did
Must be more learned than I am.
Ucalegon, he lost his house
When Agamemnon came to Troy; 10
But who can tell me who he was —
I’ll pray the gods to give him joy.
There be two men of all mankind
That I’m forever thinking on:
They chase me everywhere I go, — 15
Melchizedek, Ucalegon.
Villanelle of Change
SINCE Persia fell at Marathon,
The yellow years have gathered fast:
Long centuries have come and gone.
And yet (they say) the place will don
A phantom fury of the past, 5
Since Persia fell at Marathon;
And as of old, when Helicon
Trembled and swayed with rapture vast
(Long centuries have come and gone),
This ancient plain, when night comes on, 10
Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,
Since Persia fell at Marathon.
But into soundless Acheron
The glory of Greek shame was cast:
Long centuries have come and gone, 15
The suns of Hellas have all shone,
The first has fallen to the last: —
Since Persia fell at Marathon,
Long centuries have come and gone.
The House on the Hill