Edwin Arlington Robinson Poems

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 Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore 
The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George— 
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one 
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, 
And she was in it only for four weeks
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time 
Made all September a Queen’s Festival; 
And they would strive, informally, to make 
The...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 Fear, like a living fire that only death 
Might one day cool, had now in Avon’s eyes 
Been witness for so long of an invasion 
That made of a gay friend whom we had known 
Almost a memory, wore no other name
As yet for us than fear. Another man 
Than Avon might have given to us at least 
A...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 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, 
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...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 Down by the flash of the restless water 
The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; 
Laughing at life and the world they sought her, 
And out she swung to the silvering bay. 
Then off they flew on their roystering way, 
And the keen moon fired the light foam flying 
Up from the flood where the faint stars...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 As we the withered ferns 
By the roadway lying, 
Time, the jester, spurns 
All our prayers and prying -- 
All our tears and sighing, 
Sorrow, change, and woe -- 
All our where-and-whying 
For friends that come and go. 

Life awakes and burns, 
Age and death defying, 
Till at last it learns 
All but Love is dying; 
Love's the trade...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 You are a friend then, as I make it out,
Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
Will put an ass's head in Fairyland
As he would add a shilling to more shillings,
All most harmonious, -- and out of his
Miraculous inviolable increase
Fills Ilion, Rome, or any town you like
Of olden time with timeless Englishmen;
And I must wonder what you think of...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 I

I doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town 
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig, 
Or called him by his name, or looked at him 
So curiously, or so concernedly, 
As they had looked at ashes; but a few—
Say five or six of us—had found somehow 
The spark in him, and we had fanned it there, 
Choked under,...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 We told of him as one who should have soared 
And seen for us the devastating light 
Whereof there is not either day or night, 
And shared with us the glamour of the Word 
That fell once upon Amos to record
For men at ease in Zion, when the sight 
Of ills obscured aggrieved him and the might 
Of Hamath...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot 
In the King’s garden, coughed and followed him; 
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms 
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed— 
Hard eyes, where doubts at war with memories
Fanned a sad wrath. “Why frown upon a friend? 
Few live that have too many,” Gawaine said, 
And wished unsaid, so thinly came the light...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 (ALCAICS)


Confused, he found her lavishing feminine 
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable; 
And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors 
Be as they were, without end, her playthings? 

And why were dead years hungrily telling her 
Lies of the dead, who told them again to her? 
If now she knew, there might be kindness 
Clamoring yet where a...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 “No, Mary, there was nothing—not a word. 
Nothing, and always nothing. Go again 
Yourself, and he may listen—or at least 
Look up at you, and let you see his eyes. 
I might as well have been the sound of rain,
A wind among the cedars, or a bird; 
Or nothing. Mary, make him look at you; 
And even if he...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 “Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing—and what of it? 
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? 
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, 
We might believe they made a noise…. What are you—driving at!” 

“Well, be glad that you can hear them,...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 Like a dry fish flung inland far from shore, 
There lived a sailor, warped and ocean-browned, 
Who told of an old vessel, harbor-drowned, 
And out of mind a century before, 
Where divers, on descending to explore 
A legend that had lived its way around 
The world of ships, in the dark hulk had found 
Anchors, which had been seized...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 I 

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel -- 
We dare not feel it yet -- the splendid shame
Of uncreated failure; we forget,
The while we groan, that God's accomplishment
Is always and unfailingly at hand. 

II 

Tumultuously void of a clean...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 NOTE.—The following imaginary dialogue between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr, which is not based upon any specific incident in American history, may be supposed to have occurred a few months previous to Hamilton’s retirement from Washington’s Cabinet in 1795 and a few years before the political ingenuities of Burr—who has been characterized, without much exaggeration, as the inventor of...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 He took a frayed hat from his head, 
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said. 
“A morsel out of what you’re worth, 
And there we have it: Peace on Earth. 
Not much, although a little more
Than what there was on earth before 
I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod,— 
But never mind the ways I’ve trod; 
I’m sober now,...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 (AMSTERDAM, 1645)


And there you are again, now as you are. 
Observe yourself as you discern yourself 
In your discredited ascendency; 
Without your velvet or your feathers now, 
Commend your new condition to your fate,
And your conviction to the sieves of time. 
Meanwhile appraise yourself, Rembrandt van Ryn, 
Now as you are—formerly more or less 
Distinguished in the civil scenery,...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 “Whether all towns and all who live in them— 
So long as they be somewhere in this world 
That we in our complacency call ours— 
Are more or less the same, I leave to you. 
I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile,
We’ve all two legs—and as for that, we haven’t— 
There were three kinds of men where I...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 Between me and the sunset, like a dome 
Against the glory of a world on fire, 
Now burned a sudden hill, 
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher, 
With nothing on it for the flame to kill
Save one who moved and was alone up there 
To loom before the chaos and the glare 
As if he were...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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 When he, who is the unforgiven, 
Beheld her first, he found her fair: 
No promise ever dreamt in heaven 
Could have lured him anywhere 
That would have nbeen away from there; 
And all his wits had lightly striven, 
Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair.

There's nothing in the saints and sages 
To meet the shafts her glances had,...Read more of this...

by Robinson, Edwin Arlington

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