All Poems

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The Children of the Night

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

For those that never know the light,
The darkness is a sullen thing;
And they, the Children of the Night,
Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.

Late Summer

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

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?

Glad for the murmur of his hard renown,
Year after year he shambled through the town, --
A loveless exile moving with a staff;
And oftentimes there crept into his ears
A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, --
And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.

But for the Grace of God

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

There is a question that I ask,
And ask again:
What hunger was half-hidden by the mask
That he wore then?

Another Dark Lady

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

I cannot hate you, for I loved you then.
The woods were golden then. There was a road
Through beeches; and I said their smooth feet showed
Like yours. Truth must have heard me from afar,
For I shall never have to learn again
That yours are cloven as no beechs are.

An Evangelist's Wife

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Why am I not myself these many days,
You ask? And have you nothing more to ask?
I do you wrong? I do not hear your praise
To God for giving you me to share your task?

The Wise Brothers

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

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
We, and no others?

An Island

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Take it away, and swallow it yourself.
Ha! Look you, theres a rat.
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf,
And two of them were living in my hat.

For a Dead Lady

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

No more with overflowing light
Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another's fringe with night
Their woman-hidden world as they did.

Credo

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all--above, beyond it all--
I know the far sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.

New England

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,
We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;
Joy shivers in the corner where she knits
And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,
Cheerful as when she tortured into fits
The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

An Old Story

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Strange that I did not know him then.
That friend of mine!
I did not even show him then
One friendly sign;

Walt Whitman

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

The master-songs are ended? Rather say
No songs are ended that are ever sung,
And that no names are dead names. When we write
Men's letters on proud marble or on sand,
We write them there forever.

Cassandra

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

I heard one who said: "Verily,
What word have I for children here?
Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear.

The Dark House

Where a faint light shines alone,
Dwells a Demon I have known.
Most of you had better say
"The Dark House," and go your way.
Do not wonder if I stay.

How Annandale Went Out

I knew the ruin as I knew the man;
So put the two together, if you can,
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 wouldnt hang me? I thought not.

Peace on Earth

I could not pass the fellow by.
Do you believe in God? said I;
And is there to be Peace on Earth?

On the Night of a Friend's Wedding

But everything is all askew to-night,
As if the time were come, or almost come,
For their untenanted mirage of me
To lose itself and crumble out of sight,
Like a tall ship that floats above the foam
A little while, and then breaks utterly.

Archibald's Example

Old Archibald, in his eternal chair,
Where trespassers, whatever their degree,
Were soon frowned out again, was looking off
Across the clover when he said to me:

The Dark Hills

Dark hills at evening in the west,
Where sunset hovers like a sound
Of golden horns that sang to rest
Old bones of warriors under ground,