Truth poems

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NOTE.Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriageso far as he was concerned at any rateappears to have been satisfactory.
Now you have read them all; or if not all,
As many as in all conscience I should fancy
To be enough. There are no more of them

The Book of Annandale

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

IPartly to think, more to be left alone,
George Annandale said something to his friends
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough
To suit their funeral gazeand went upstairs;

Sainte-Nitouche

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Though not for common praise of him,
Nor yet for pride or charity,
Still would I make to Vanderberg
One tribute for his memory:

Nimmo

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Since you remember Nimmo, and arrive
At such a false and florid and far drawn
Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive
No longer, though I may have led you on.

Llewellyn and the Tree

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Could he have made Priscilla share
The paradise that he had planned,
Llewellyn would have loved his wife
As well as any in the land.

Rembrandt to Rembrandt

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

(AMSTERDAM, 1645)
And there you are again, now as you are.
Observe yourself as you discern yourself
In your discredited ascendency;

The Sage

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

There at his touch there was a treasure chest,
And in it was a gleam, but not of gold;
And on it, like a flame, these words were scrolled:
I keep the mintage of Eternity.
Who comes to take one coin may take the rest,
And all may comebut not without the key.

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;

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?

Flammonde

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

The man Flammonde, from God knows where,
With firm address and foreign air
With news of nations in his talk
And something royal in his walk,

George Crabbe

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Whether or not we read him, we can feel
From time to time the vigor of his name
Against us like a finger for the shame
And emptiness of what our souls reveal
In books that are as altars where we kneel
To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.

Ballad by the Fire

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

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 False Gods

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit,
From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet.
You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes,
Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet.

As a World Would Have It

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Shall I never make him look at me again?
I look at him, I look my life at him,
I tell him all I know the way to tell,
But there he stays the same.

The Man Against the Sky

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,

The Gift of God

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 -

Lancelot

Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot
In the Kings garden, coughed and followed him;
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed

Zola

Never until we conquer the uncouth
Connivings of our shamed indifference
(We call it Christian faith) are we to scan
The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth
To find, in hates polluted self-defence
Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.

Captain Craig

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

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;