All Poems
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The Clinging Vine
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Be calm? And was I frantic?
Youll have me laughing soon.
Im calm as this Atlantic,
And quiet as the moon;
Shadrach O'Leary
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
But this was not the end. A year ago
I met himand to meet was to admire:
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.
Avon's Harvest
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Mightnt it be as well, my friend, I said,
For you to contemplate the uncompleted
With not such an infernal certainty?
The Sunken Crown
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Well, we are safe enough. Why linger, then?
The watery chance was his, not ours. Poor fool!
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.
John Gorham
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Tell me what youre doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when youre 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.
Fragment
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
There are the pillars, and all gone gray.
Briony's hair went white. You may see
Where the garden was if you come this way.
That sun-dial scared him, he said to me;
"Sooner or later they strike," said he,
But he knew too much for the life he led.
The Old King's New Jester
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
You that in vain would front the coming order
With eyes that meet forlornly what they must,
And only with a furtive recognition
See dust where there is dust,
For Ariva
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
You say not; but you think, without a doubt;
And you have the whole world to think about,
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.
Uncle Ananias
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
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,
I crown him loveliest.
The Torrent
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I found a torrent falling in a glen
Where the suns light shone silvered and leaf-split;
The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it
All made a magic symphony; but when
Old Trails
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.
King Solomon was right, theres nothing new,
Said he. Behold a ruin who meant well.
Two Gardens in Linndale
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Two brothers, Oakes and Oliver,
Two gentle men as ever were,
Would roam no longer, but abide
In Linndale, where their fathers died,
And each would be a gardener.
The Revealer
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
(ROOSEVELT)He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion
And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?Judges, 14.
The palms of Mammon have disowned
The gift of our complacency;
The bells of ages have intoned
Demos
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
All you that are enamored of my name
And least intent on what most I require,
Beware; for my design and your desire,
Deplorably, are not as yet the same.
The Town Down by the River
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
ISaid the Watcher by the Way
To the young and the unladen,
To the boy and to the maiden,
"God be with you both to-day.
The Klondike
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Never mind the day we left, or the day the women clung to us;
All we need now is the last way they looked at us.
Never mind the twelve men there amid the cheering
Twelve men or one man, t will soon be all the same;
For this is what we know: we are five men together,
Five left o twelve men to find the golden river.
The Master
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
A flying word from here and there
Had sown the name at which we sneered,
To be reviled and then revered:
A presence to be loved and feared--
Recalled
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I mentioned them, and Isaac shook his head:
The Power that you call yours and I call mine
Extinguished in the last of them a line
That Satan would have disinherited.
When we are done with all but the Divine,
We die. And there was no more to be said.
Charles Carville's Eyes
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
He never was a fellow that said much,
And half of what he did say was not heard
By many of us: we were out of touch
With all his whims and all his theories
Till he was dead, so those blank eyes of his
Might speak them. Then we heard them, every word.
Job the Rejected
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Job would have deprecated such a way
Of heaving fuel on a sacred fire,
Yet even the while we saw it going out,
Hardly was Job to find his hour to shout;
And Job was not, so far as we could say,
The confirmation of her souls desire.
