Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

  Without him at my elbow or behind me.

  My shadow of him, wherever I found myself,

  Might horribly as well have been the man — 630

  Although I should have been afraid of him

  No more than of a large worm in a salad.

  I should omit the salad, certainly,

  And wish the worm elsewhere. And so he was,

  In fact; yet as I go on to grow older, 635

  I question if there’s anywhere a fact

  That isn’t the malevolent existence

  Of one man who is dead, or is not dead,

  Or what the devil it is that he may be.

  There must be, I suppose, a fact somewhere, 640

  But I don’t know it. I can only tell you

  That later, when to all appearances

  I stood outside a music-hall in London,

  I felt him and then saw that he was there.

  Yes, he was there, and had with him a woman 645

  Who looked as if she didn’t know. I’m sorry

  To this day for that woman — who, no doubt,

  Is doing well. Yes, there he was again;

  There were his eyes and the same vengeance in them

  That I had seen in Rome and twice before — 650

  Not mentioning all the time, or most of it,

  Between the day I struck him and that evening.

  That was the worst show that I ever saw,

  But you had better see it for yourself

  Before you say so too. I went away, 655

  Though not for any fear that I could feel

  Of him or of his worst manipulations,

  But only to be out of the same air

  That made him stay alive in the same world

  With all the gentlemen that were in irons 660

  For uncommendable extravagances

  That I should reckon slight compared with his

  Offence of being. Distance would have made him

  A moving fly-speck on the map of life, —

  But he would not be distant, though his flesh 665

  And bone might have been climbing Fujiyama

  Or Chimborazo — with me there in London,

  Or sitting here. My doom it was to see him,

  Be where I might. That was ten years ago;

  And having waited season after season 670

  His always imminent evil recrudescence,

  And all for nothing, I was waiting still,

  When the Titanic touched a piece of ice

  And we were for a moment where we are,

  With nature laughing at us. When the noise 675

  Had spent itself to names, his was among them;

  And I will not insult you or myself

  With a vain perjury. I was far from cold.

  It seemed as for the first time in my life

  I knew the blessedness of being warm; 680

  And I remember that I had a drink,

  Having assuredly no need of it.

  Pity a fool for his credulity,

  If so you must. But when I found his name

  Among the dead, I trusted once the news; 685

  And after that there were no messages

  In ambush waiting for me on my birthday.

  There was no vestige yet of any fear,

  You understand — if that’s why you are smiling.”

  I said that I had not so much as whispered 690

  The name aloud of any fear soever,

  And that I smiled at his unwonted plunge

  Into the perilous pool of Dionysus.

  “Well, if you are so easily diverted

  As that,” he said, drumming his chair again, 695

  “You will be pleased, I think, with what is coming;

  And though there be divisions and departures,

  Imminent from now on, for your diversion

  I’ll do the best I can. More to the point,

  I know a man who if his friends were like him 700

  Would live in the woods all summer and all winter,

  Leaving the town and its iniquities

  To die of their own dust. But having his wits,

  Henceforth he may conceivably avoid

  The adventure unattended. Last October 705

  He took me with him into the Maine woods,

  Where, by the shore of a primeval lake,

  With woods all round it, and a voyage away

  From anything wearing clothes, he had reared somehow

  A lodge, or camp, with a stone chimney in it, 710

  And a wide fireplace to make men forget

  Their sins who sat before it in the evening,

  Hearing the wind outside among the trees

  And the black water washing on the shore.

  I never knew the meaning of October 715

  Until I went with Asher to that place,

  Which I shall not investigate again

  Till I be taken there by other forces

  Than are innate in my economy.

  ‘You may not like it,’ Asher said, ‘but Asher 720

  Knows what is good. So put your faith in Asher,

  And come along with him. He’s an odd bird,

  Yet I could wish for the world’s decency

  There might be more of him. And so it was

  I found myself, at first incredulous, 725

  Down there with Asher in the wilderness,

  Alive at last with a new liberty

  And with no sore to fester. He perceived

  In me an altered favor of God’s works,

  And promptly took upon himself the credit, 730

  Which, in a fashion, was as accurate

  As one’s interpretation of another

  Is like to be. So for a frosty fortnight

  We had the sunlight with us on the lake,

  And the moon with us when the sun was down. 735

  ‘God gave his adjutants a holiday,’

  Asher assured me, ‘when He made this place’;

  And I agreed with him that it was heaven, —

  Till it was hell for me for then and after.

  “There was a village miles away from us 740

  Where now and then we paddled for the mail

  And incidental small commodities

  That perfect exile might require, and stayed

  The night after the voyage with an antique

  Survival of a broader world than ours 745

  Whom Asher called The Admiral. This time,

  A little out of sorts and out of tune

  With paddling, I let Asher go alone,

  Sure that his heart was happy. Then it was

  That hell came. I sat gazing over there 750

  Across the water, watching the sun’s last fire

  Above those gloomy and indifferent trees

  That might have been a wall around the world,

  When suddenly, like faces over the lake,

  Out of the silence of that other shore 755

  I was aware of hidden presences

  That soon, no matter how many of them there were,

  Would all be one. I could not look behind me,

  Where I could hear that one of them was breathing,

  For, if I did, those others over there 760

  Might all see that at last I was afraid;

  And I might hear them without seeing them,

  Seeing that other one. You were not there;

  And it is well for you that you don’t know

  What they are like when they should not be there. 765

  And there were chilly doubts of whether or not

  I should be seeing the rest that I should see

  With eyes, or otherwise. I could not be sure;

  And as for going over to find out,

  All I may tell you now is that my fear 770

  Was not the fear of dying, though I knew soon

  That all the gold in all the sunken ships

  That have gone down since Tyre would not have pa
id

  For me the ferriage of myself alone

  To that infernal shore. I was in hell, 775

  Remember; and if you have never been there

  You may as well not say how easy it is

  To find the best way out. There may not be one.

  Well, I was there; and I was there alone —

  Alone for the first time since I was born; 780

  And I was not alone. That’s what it is

  To be in hell. I hope you will not go there.

  All through that slow, long, desolating twilight

  Of incoherent certainties, I waited;

  Never alone — never to be alone; 785

  And while the night grew down upon me there,

  I thought of old Prometheus in the story

  That I had read at school, and saw mankind

  All huddled into clusters in the dark,

  Calling to God for light. There was a light 790

  Coming for them, but there was none for me

  Until a shapeless remnant of a moon

  Rose after midnight over the black trees

  Behind me. I should hardly have confessed

  The heritage then of my identity 795

  To my own shadow; for I was powerless there,

  As I am here. Say what you like to say

  To silence, but say none of it to me

  Tonight. To say it now would do no good,

  And you are here to listen. Beware of hate, 800

  And listen. Beware of hate, remorse, and fear,

  And listen. You are staring at the damned,

  But yet you are no more the one than he

  To say that it was he alone who planted

  The flower of death now growing in his garden. 805

  Was it enough, I wonder, that I struck him?

  I shall say nothing. I shall have to wait

  Until I see what’s coming, if it comes,

  When I’m a delver in another garden —

  If such an one there be. If there be none, 810

  All’s well — and over. Rather a vain expense,

  One might affirm — yet there is nothing lost.

  Science be praised that there is nothing lost.”

  I’m glad the venom that was on his tongue

  May not go down on paper; and I’m glad 815

  No friend of mine alive, far as I know,

  Has a tale waiting for me with an end

  Like Avon’s. There was here an interruption,

  Though not a long one — only while we heard,

  As we had heard before, the ghost of steps 820

  Faintly outside. We knew that she was there

  Again; and though it was a kindly folly,

  I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep.

  “I was afraid, this time, but not of man —

  Or man as you may figure him,” he said. 825

  “It was not anything my eyes had seen

  That I could feel around me in the night,

  There by that lake. If I had been alone,

  There would have been the joy of being free,

  Which in imagination I had won 830

  With unimaginable expiation —

  But I was not alone. If you had seen me,

  Waiting there for the dark and looking off

  Over the gloom of that relentless water,

  Which had the stillness of the end of things 835

  That evening on it, I might well have made

  For you the picture of the last man left

  Where God, in his extinction of the rest,

  Had overlooked him and forgotten him.

  Yet I was not alone. Interminably 840

  The minutes crawled along and over me,

  Slow, cold, intangible, and invisible,

  As if they had come up out of that water.

  How long I sat there I shall never know,

  For time was hidden out there in the black lake, 845

  Which now I could see only as a glimpse

  Of black light by the shore. There were no stars

  To mention, and the moon was hours away

  Behind me. There was nothing but myself,

  And what was coming. On my breast I felt 850

  The touch of death, and I should have died then.

  I ruined good Asher’s autumn as it was,

  For he will never again go there alone,

  If ever he goes at all. Nature did ill

  To darken such a faith in her as his, 855

  Though he will have it that I had the worst

  Of her defection, and will hear no more

  Apologies. If it had to be for someone,

  I think it well for me it was for Asher.

  I dwell on him, meaning that you may know him 860

  Before your last horn blows. He has a name

  That’s like a tree, and therefore like himself —

  By which I mean you find him where you leave him.

  I saw him and The Admiral together

  While I was in the dark, but they were far — 865

  Far as around the world from where I was;

  And they knew nothing of what I saw not

  While I knew only I was not alone.

  I made a fire to make the place alive,

  And locked the door. But even the fire was dead, 870

  And all the life there was was in the shadow

  It made of me. My shadow was all of me;

  The rest had had its day, and there was night

  Remaining — only night, that’s made for shadows,

  Shadows and sleep and dreams, or dreams without it. 875

  The fire went slowly down, and now the moon,

  Or that late wreck of it, was coming up;

  And though it was a martyr’s work to move,

  I must obey my shadow, and I did.

  There were two beds built low against the wall, 880

  And down on one of them, with all my clothes on,

  Like a man getting into his own grave,

  I lay — and waited. As the firelight sank,

  The moonlight, which had partly been consumed

  By the black trees, framed on the other wall 885

  A glimmering window not far from the ground.

  The coals were going, and only a few sparks

  Were there to tell of them; and as they died

  The window lightened, and I saw the trees.

  They moved a little, but I could not move, 890

  More than to turn my face the other way;

  And then, if you must have it so, I slept.

  We’ll call it so — if sleep is your best name

  For a sort of conscious, frozen catalepsy

  Wherein a man sees all there is around him 895

  As if it were not real, and he were not

  Alive. You may call it anything you please

  That made me powerless to move hand or foot,

  Or to make any other living motion

  Than after a long horror, without hope, 900

  To turn my face again the other way.

  Some force that was not mine opened my eyes,

  And, as I knew it must be, — it was there.”

  Avon covered his eyes — whether to shut

  The memory and the sight of it away, 905

  Or to be sure that mine were for the moment

  Not searching his with pity, is now no matter.

  My glance at him was brief, turning itself

  To the familiar pattern of his rug,

  Wherein I may have sought a consolation — 910

  As one may gaze in sorrow on a shell,

  Or a small apple. So it had come, I thought;

  And heard, no longer with a wonderment,

  The faint recurring footsteps of his wife,

  Who, knowing less than I knew, yet knew more. 915

  Now I could read, I fancied, through the fear

  That latterly was living in her eyes,

  To the s
ure source of its authority.

  But he went on, and I was there to listen:

  “And though I saw it only as a blot 920

  Between me and my life, it was enough

  To make me know that he was watching there —

  Waiting for me to move, or not to move,

  Before he moved. Sick as I was with hate

  Reborn, and chained with fear that was more than fear, 925

  I would have gambled all there was to gain

  Or lose in rising there from where I lay

  And going out after it. ‘Before the dawn,’

  I reasoned, ‘there will be a difference here.

  Therefore it may as well be done outside.’ 930

  And then I found I was immovable,

  As I had been before; and a dead sweat

  Rolled out of me as I remembered him

  When I had seen him leaving me at school.

  ‘I shall know where you are until you die,’ 935

  Were the last words that I had heard him say;

  And there he was. Now I could see his face,

  And all the sad, malignant desperation

  That was drawn on it after I had struck him,

  And on my memory since that afternoon. 940

  But all there was left now for me to do

  Was to lie there and see him while he squeezed

  His unclean outlines into the dim room,

  And half erect inside, like a still beast

  With a face partly man’s, came slowly on 945

  Along the floor to the bed where I lay,

  And waited. There had been so much of waiting,

  Through all those evil years before my respite —

  Which now I knew and recognized at last

  As only his more venomous preparation 950

  For the vile end of a deceiving peace —

  That I began to fancy there was on me

  The stupor that explorers have alleged

  As evidence of nature’s final mercy

  When tigers have them down upon the earth 955

  And wild hot breath is heavy on their faces.

  I could not feel his breath, but I could hear it;

  Though fear had made an anvil of my heart

  Where demons, for the joy of doing it,

  Were sledging death down on it. And I saw 960

  His eyes now, as they were, for the first time —

  Aflame as they had never been before

  With all their gathered vengeance gleaming in them,

  And always that unconscionable sorrow

  That would not die behind it. Then I caught 965

  The shadowy glimpse of an uplifted arm,

  And a moon-flash of metal. That was all.…

  “When I believed I was alive again

  I was with Asher and The Admiral,