Good poems

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The Poor Relation

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

No longer torn by what she knows
And sees within the eyes of others,
Her doubts are when the daylight goes,
Her fears are for the few she bothers.

The Wandering Jew

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

I saw by looking in his eyes
That they remembered everything;
And this was how I came to know
That he was here, still wandering.

Then, with a melancholy glee
To think where once my fancy strayed,
I muse on what the years may be
Whose coming tales are all unsaid,
Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid
Within their shadowed niches, grow

The Clerks

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

And you that ache so much to be sublime,
And you that feed yourselves with your descent,
What comes of all your visions and your fears?
Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time,
Tiering the same dull webs of discontent,
Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.

Lazarus

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Master loved you as he loved us all,
Martha; and you are saying only things
That children say when they have had no sleep.
Try somehow now to rest a little while;
You know that I am here, and that our friends
Are coming if I call.

Variations of Greek Themes

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

I
A HAPPY MAN
(Carphyllides)

The Long Race

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

They dredged an hour for words, and then were done.
Good-bye! You have the same old weather-vane
Your little horse thats always on the run.
And all the way down back to the next train,
Down the old hill to the old road again,
It seemed as if the little horse had won.

Merlin

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
Dye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons

The Man Against the Sky

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

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,

Calvary

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

But after nineteen hundred years the shame
Still clings, and we have not made good the loss
That outraged faith has entered in his name.
Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong!
Tell me, O Lord -- tell me, O Lord, how long
Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!

Boston

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

My northern pines are good enough for me,
But theres a town my memory uprears
A town that always like a friend appears,
And always in the sunrise by the sea.

The Gift of God

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Blessed with a joy that only she
Of all alive shall ever know,
She wears a proud humility
For what it was that willed it so -

Captain Craig

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

II 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,

John Brown

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
God knows how much a stranger to my heart
Was any cold word that I may have written;

Old King Cole

In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
A wise old age anticipate,
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
No Khans extravagant estate.

The Unforgiven

When he, who is the unforgiven,
Beheld her first, he found her fair:
No promise ever dreamt in heaven
Could have lured him anywhere

Aunt Imogen

Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore
The childrenJane, Sylvester, and Young George
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,

The Children of the Night

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.

An Evangelist's Wife

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?

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.