Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Down where he lies to-night, silent, and under the storms.

  Momus

  “WHERE’S the need of singing now?” —

  Smooth your brow,

  Momus, and be reconciled,

  For King Kronos is a child —

  Child and father, 5

  Or god rather,

  And all gods are wild.

  “Who reads Byron any more?” —

  Shut the door,

  Momus, for I feel a draught; 10

  Shut it quick, for some one laughed. —

  “What’s become of

  Browning? Some of

  Wordsworth lumbers like a raft?

  “What are poets to find here?” — 15

  Have no fear:

  When the stars are shining blue

  There will yet be left a few

  Themes availing —

  And these failing, 20

  Momus, there’ll be you.

  Uncle Ananias

  HIS words were magic and his heart was true,

  And everywhere he wandered he was blessed.

  Out of all ancient men my childhood knew

  I choose him and I mark him for the best.

  Of all authoritative liars, too, 5

  I crown him loveliest.

  How fondly I remember the delight

  That always glorified him in the spring;

  The joyous courage and the benedight

  Profusion of his faith in everything! 10

  He was a good old man, and it was right

  That he should have his fling.

  And often, underneath the apple-trees,

  When we surprised him in the summer time,

  With what superb magnificence and ease 15

  He sinned enough to make the day sublime!

  And if he liked us there about his knees,

  Truly it was no crime.

  All summer long we loved him for the same

  Perennial inspiration of his lies; 20

  And when the russet wealth of autumn came,

  There flew but fairer visions to our eyes —

  Multiple, tropical, winged with a feathery flame,

  Like birds of paradise.

  So to the sheltered end of many a year 25

  He charmed the seasons out with pageantry

  Wearing upon his forehead, with no fear,

  The laurel of approved iniquity.

  And every child who knew him, far or near,

  Did love him faithfully. 30

  The Whip

  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, 5

  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: 10

  The roses and the sod

  Will not forswear the wave.

  The gift the river gave

  Is now but theirs to cover:

  The mistress and the slave 15

  Are gone now, and the lover.

  You left the two to find

  Their own way to the brink

  Then — shall I call you blind? —

  You chose to plunge and sink. 20

  God knows the gall we drink

  Is not the mead we cry for,

  Nor was it, I should think —

  For you — a thing to die for.

  Could we have done the same, 25

  Had we been in your place? —

  This funeral of your name

  Throws no light on the case.

  Could we have made the chase,

  And felt then as you felt? — 30

  But what’s this on your face,

  Blue, curious, like a welt?

  There were some ropes of sand

  Recorded long ago,

  But none, I understand, 35

  Of water. Is it so?

  And she — she struck the blow,

  You but a neck behind …

  You saw the river flow —

  Still, shall I call you blind? 40

  The White Lights

  (BROADWAY, 1906)

  WHEN in from Delos came the gold

  That held the dream of Pericles,

  When first Athenian ears were told

  The tumult of Euripides,

  When men met Aristophanes, 5

  Who fledged them with immortal quills —

  Here, where the time knew none of these,

  There were some islands and some hills.

  When Rome went ravening to see

  The sons of mothers end their days, 10

  When Flaccus bade Leuconoë

  To banish her chaldean ways,

  When first the pearled, alembic phrase

  Of Maro into music ran —

  Here there was neither blame nor praise 15

  For Rome, or for the Mantuan.

  When Avon, like a faery floor,

  Lay freighted, for the eyes of One,

  With galleons laden long before

  By moonlit wharves in Avalon — 20

  Here, where the white lights have begun

  To seethe a way for something fair,

  No prophet knew, from what was done,

  That there was triumph in the air.

  Exit

  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, 5

  And for our faith before the fall,

  May we who are alive be slow

  To tell what we shall never know.

  For penance he would not confess,

  And for the fateful emptiness 10

  Of early triumph undermined,

  May we now venture to be kind.

  Leonora

  THEY have made for Leonora this low dwelling in the ground,

  And with cedar they have woven the four walls round.

  Like a little dryad hiding she’ll be wrapped all in green,

  Better kept and longer valued than by ways that would have been.

  They will come with many roses in the early afternoon, 5

  They will come with pinks and lilies and with Leonora soon;

  And as long as beauty’s garments over beauty’s limbs are thrown,

  There’ll be lilies that are liars, and the rose will have its own.

  There will be a wondrous quiet in the house that they have made,

  And to-night will be a darkness in the place where she’ll be laid; 10

  But the builders, looking forward into time, could only see

  Darker nights for Leonora than to-night shall ever be.

  The Wise Brothers

  FIRST VOICE

  SO long adrift, so fast aground,

  What foam and ruin have we found —

  We, the Wise Brothers?

  Could heaven and earth be framed amiss,

  That we should land in fine like this — 5

  We, and no others?

  SECOND VOICE

  Convoyed by what accursèd thing

  Made we this evil reckoning —

  We, the Wise Brothers?

  And if the failure be complete, 10

  Why look we forward from defeat —

  We, and what others?

  THIRD VOICE

  Blown far from harbors once in sight,

  May we not, going far, go right, —

  We, the Wise Brothers? 15

  Companioned by the whirling spheres,

  Have we no more than what appears —

  We, and all others?

  But for the Grace of God

  “There, but for the grace of God, goes…”

  THERE is a question that I ask,

  And ask again:

  What hun
ger was half-hidden by the mask

  That he wore then?

  There was a word for me to say 5

  That I said not;

  And in the past there was another day

  That I forgot:

  A dreary, cold, unwholesome day,

  Racked overhead, — 10

  As if the world were turning the wrong way,

  And the sun dead:

  A day that comes back well enough

  Now he is gone.

  What then? Has memory no other stuff 15

  To seize upon?

  Wherever he may wander now

  In his despair,

  Would he be more contented in the slough

  If all were there? 20

  And yet he brought a kind of light

  Into the room;

  And when he left, a tinge of something bright

  Survived the gloom.

  Why will he not be where he is, 25

  And not with me?

  The hours that are my life are mine, not his, —

  Or used to be.

  What numerous imps invisible

  Has he at hand, 30

  Far-flying and forlorn as what they tell

  At his command?

  What hold of weirdness or of worth

  Can he possess,

  That he may speak from anywhere on earth 35

  His loneliness?

  Shall I be caught and held again

  In the old net? —

  He brought a sorry sunbeam with him then,

  But it beams yet. 40

  For Arvia

  ON HER FIFTH BIRTHDAY

  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 meaning of your scrutinies. 5

  And of myself. Am I a Mystery?

  Am I a Boojum — or just Company?

  What do you say? What do you think, You Eyes?

  You say not; but you think, beyond a doubt;

  And you have the whole world to think about, 10

  With very little time for little things.

  So let it be; and let it all be fair —

  For you, and for the rest who cannot share

  Your gold of unrevealed awakenings.

  The Sunken Crown

  NOTHING will hold him longer — let him go;

  Let him go down where others have gone down;

  Little he cares whether we smile or frown,

  Or if we know, or if we think we know.

  The call is on him for his overthrow, 5

  Say we; so let him rise, or let him drown.

  Poor fool! He plunges for the sunken crown,

  And we — we wait for what the plunge may show.

  Well, we are safe enough. Why linger, then?

  The watery chance was his, not ours. Poor fool! 10

  Poor truant, poor Narcissus out of school;

  Poor jest of Ascalon; poor king of men. —

  The crown, if he be wearing it, may cool

  His arrogance, and he may sleep again.

  Doctor of Billiards

  Of all among the fallen from on high,

  We count you last and leave you to regain

  Your born dominion of a life made vain

  By three spheres of insidious ivory.

  You dwindle to the lesser tragedy — 5

  Content, you say. We call, but you remain.

  Nothing alive gone wrong could be so plain,

  Or quite so blasted with absurdity.

  You click away the kingdom that is yours,

  And you click off your crown for cap and bells; 10

  You smile, who are still master of the feast,

  And for your smile we credit you the least;

  But when your false, unhallowed laugh occurs,

  We seem to think there may be something else.

  Shadrach O’Leary

  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, 5

  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 was not the end. A year ago

  I met him — and to meet was to admire: 10

  Forgotten were the ladies and the lyre,

  And the small, ink-fed Eros of his dream.

  By questioning I found a man to know —

  A failure spared, a Shadrach of the Gleam.

  How Annandale Went Out

  “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 that I have seen elsewhere: 5

  An apparatus not for me to mend —

  A wreck, with hell between him and the end,

  Remained of Annandale; and I was there.

  “I knew the ruin as I knew the man;

  So put the two together, if you can, 10

  Remembering the worst you know of me.

  Now view yourself as I was, on the spot —

  With a slight kind of engine. Do you see?

  Like this … You wouldn’t hang me? I thought not.”

  Alma Mater

  HE knocked, and I beheld him at the door —

  A vision for the gods to verify.

  “What battered ancientry is this,” thought I,

  “And when, if ever, did we meet before?”

  But ask him as I might, I got no more 5

  For answer than a moaning and a cry:

  Too late to parley, but in time to die,

  He staggered, and lay shapeless on the floor.

  When had I known him? And what brought him here?

  Love, warning, malediction, hunger, fear? 10

  Surely I never thwarted such as he? —

  Again, what soiled obscurity was this:

  Out of what scum, and up from what abyss,

  Had they arrived — these rags of memory?

  Miniver Cheevy

  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 5

  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; 10

  He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

  And Priam’s neighbors.

  Miniver mourned the ripe renown

  That made so many a name so fragrant;

  He mourned Romance, now on the town, 15

  And Art, a vagrant.

  Miniver loved the Medici,

  Albeit he had never seen one;

  He would have sinned incessantly

  Could he have been one. 20

  Miniver cursed the commonplace

  And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;

  He missed the mediaeval grace

  Of iron clothing.

  Miniver scorned the gold he sought, 25

  But sore annoyed was he without it;

  Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,

  And thought about it.

  Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

  Scratched his head and kept on thinking; 30

  Miniver coughed, and called it fate,

  And kept on drinking.

  The Pilot

  FROM the Past and Unavailing

  Out of cloudland we are steering:

  After groping, after f
earing,

  Into starlight we come trailing,

  And we find the stars are true. 5

  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; 10

  Uncommanded and unrated,

  We have tossed and wandered, yearning

  For a charm that comes no more

  From the old lights by the shore:

  We have shamed ourselves in learning 15

  What you knew so long before.

  For the Breed of the Far-going

  Who are strangers, and all brothers,

  May forget no more than others

  Who looked seaward with eyes flowing. 20

  But are brothers to bewail

  One who fought so foul a gale?

  You have won beyond our knowing,

  You are gone, but yet we sail.

  Vickery’s Mountain

  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 5

  On earth as yet may know:

  There’s a golden word that he never tells,

  And a gift that he will not show.

  He dreams of honor and wealth and fame,

  He smiles, and well he may; 10

  For to Vickery once a sick man came

  Who did not go away.

  The day before the day to be,