Credo

I CANNOT find my way: there is no star

In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;

And there is not a whisper in the air

Of any living voice but one so far

That I can hear it only as a bar

Of lost, imperial music, played when fair

And angel fingers wove, and unaware,

Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

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.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Miniver Cheevy

MINIVER Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons

He wept that he was ever born,

And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;

The vision of a warrior bold

Would send him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,

And dreamed, and rested from his labors;

He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,

And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown

That made so many a name so fragrant;

He mourned Romance, now on the town,

And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,

Albeit he had never seen one;

He would have sinned incessantly

Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace

And eyed a khaki suit with loathing:

He missed the medieval grace

Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,

But sore annoyed was he without it;

Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,

And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

Scratched his head and kept on thinking;

Miniver coughed, and called it fate,

And kept on drinking.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The House on the Hill

THEY are all gone away,

The house is shut and still,

There is nothing more to say.

Through broken walls and gray

The winds blow bleak and shrill:

They are all gone away.

Nor is there one today

To speak them good or ill:

There is nothing more to say.

Why is it then we stray

Around the sunken sill?

They are all gone away.

And our poor fancy-play

For them is wasted skill:

There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay

In the House on the Hill

They are all gone away,

There is nothing more to say.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Eros Turannos

SHE fears him, and will always ask

What fated her to choose him;

She meets in his engaging mask

All reason to refuse him.

But what she meets and what she fears

Are less than are the downward years,

Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs

Of age, were she to lose him.

Between a blurred sagacity

That once had power to sound him,

And Love, that will not let him be

The Judas that she found him,

Her pride assuages her almost

As if it were alone the cost--

He sees that he will not be lost,

And waits, and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees

Envelops and allures him;

Tradition, touching all he sees,

Beguiles and reassures him.

And all her doubts of what he says

Are dimmed by what she knows of days,

Till even Prejudice delays

And fades, and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates

The reign of her confusion;

The pounding wave reverberates

The dirge of her illusion.

And Home, where passion lived and died,

Becomes a place where she can hide,

While all the town and harbor side

Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,

The story as it should be,

As if the story of a house

Were told, or ever could be.

We'll have no kindly veil between

Her visions and those we have seen--

As if we guessed what hers have been,

Or what they are or would be.

Meanwhile we do no harm, for they

That with a god have striven,

Not hearing much of what we say,

Take what the god has given.

Though like waves breaking it may be,

Or like a changed familiar tree,

Or like a stairway to the sea,

Where down the blind are driven.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Richard Cory

WHENEVER Richard Cory went down town,

We people on the pavement looked at him;

He was a gentleman from sole to crown,

Clean favored, and imperially slim.

And he was always quietly arrayed,

And he was always human when he talked,

But still he fluttered pulses when he said

"Good morning"--and he glittered when he walked.

And he was rich--yes, richer than a king,

And admirably schooled in every grace;

In fact, we thought that he was everything

To make us wish that we were in his place.

So on we worked, and waited for the light,

And went without the meat, and cursed the bread,

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,

Went home and put a bullet through his head.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Mr. Flood's Party

OLD Eben Flood, climbing alone one night

Over the hill between the town below

And the forsaken upland hermitage

That held as much as he should ever know

On earth again of home, paused warily.

The road was his with not a native near;

And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,

For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon

Again, and we may not have many more;

The bird is on the wing, the poet says,

And you and I have said it here before.

Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light

The jug that he had gone so far to fill,

And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,

Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end

A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn.

He stood there in the middle of the road

Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.

Below him, in the town among the trees,

Where friends of other days had honored him,

A phantom salutation of the dead

Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child

Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,

He sat the jug down slowly at his feet

With trembling care, knowing that most things break;

And only when assured that on firm earth

It stood, as the uncertain lives of men

Assuredly did not, he paced away,

And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this

In a long time; and many a change has come

To both of us, I fear, since last it was

We had a drop together. Welcome home!"

Convivially returning with himself,

Again he raised the jug up to the light;

And with an acquiescent quaver said:

"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood--

For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."

So, for the time, apparently it did

And Eben apparently thouht so too;

For soon among the silver loneliness

Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,

Secure, with only two moons listening,

Until the whole harmonious landscape rang--

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,

The last word wavered, and the song was done.

He raised again the jug regretfully

And shook his head, and was again alone.

There was not much that was ahead of him,

And there was nothing in the town below--

Where strangers would have shut the many doors

That many friends had opened long ago.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Luke Havergal

GO to the western gate, Luke Havergal,

There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,

And in the twilight wait for what will come.

The leaves will whisper there of her, and some,

Like flying words, will strike you as they fall;

But go, and if you listen, she will call.

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal-

Luke Havergal.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies

To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;

But there, where western glooms are gathering

The dark will end the dark, if anything:

God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,

And hell is more than half of paradise.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies-

In eastern skies.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this,

Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss

That flames upon your forehead with a glow

That blinds you to the way that you must go.

Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,

Bitter, but one that faith may never miss.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this-

To tell you this.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,

There are the crimson leaves upon the wall,

Go, for the winds are tearing them away,-

Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,

Nor any more to feel them as they fall;

But go, and if you trust her she will call.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal-

Luke Havergal.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

For a Dead lady

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.

No more shall quiver down the days

The flowing wonder of her ways,

Whereof no language may requite

The shifting and the many-shaded.

The grace, divine, definitive,

Clings only as a faint forestalling;

The laugh that love could not forgive

Is hushed, and answers to no calling;

The forehead and the little ears

Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;

The breast where roses could not live

Has done with rising and with falling.

The beauty, shattered by the laws

That have creation in their keeping,

No longer trembles at applause,

Or over children that are sleeping;

And we who delve in beauty's lore

Know all that we have known before

Of what inexorable cause

Makes Time so viscious in his reaping.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

An Old Story

STRANGE that I did not know him then.

That friend of mine!

I did not even show him then

One friendly sign;

But cursed him for the ways he had

To make me see

My envy of the praise he had

For praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him

Once, in my pride...

I never knew the worth of him

Until he died.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

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,

Far now from all the bannered ways

Where flash the legions of the sun,

You fade--as if the last of days

Were fading, and all wars were done.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Bewick Finzer

TIME was when his half million drew

The breath of six per cent;

But soon the worm of what-was-not

Fed hard on his content;

And something crumbled in his brain

When his half million went.

Time passed, and filled along with his

The place of many more;

Time came, and hardly one of us

Had credence to restore,

From what appeared one day, the man

Whom we had known before.

The broken voice, the withered neck,

The coat worn out with care,

The cleanliness of indigence,

The brilliance of despair,

The fond imponderable dreams

Of affluence,--all were there.

Poor Finzer, with his dreams and schemes,

Fares hard now in the race,

With heart and eye that have a task

When he looks in the eye

Of one who might so easily

Have been in Finzer's place.

He comes unfailing for the loan

We give and then forget;

He comes, and probably for years

Will he be coming yet,--

Familiar as an old mistake,

And futile as regret.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Master

Lincoln as he appeared to one soon after the Civil War

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--

We cannot hide it, or deny

That we, the gentlemen who jeered,

May be forgotten by and by.

He came when days were perilous

And hearts of men were sore beguiled,

And having made his note of us,

He pondered and was reconciled.

Was ever master yet so mild

As he, and so untamable?

We doubted, even when he smiled,

Not knowing what he knew so well.

He knew that undeceiving fate

Would shame us whom he served unsought;

He knew that he must wince and wait--

The jest of those for whom he fought;

He knew devoutly what he thought

Of us and of our ridicule;

He knew that we must all be taught

Like little children in a school.

We gave a glamour to the task

That he encountered and saw through;

But little of us did he ask,

And little did we ever do.

And what appears if we review

The season when we railed and chaffed?--

It is the face of one who knew

That we were learning while we laughed.

The face that in our vision feels

Again the venom that we flung,

Transfigured to the world reveals

The vigilance to which we clung.

Shrewd, hallowed, harrassed, and among

The mysteries that are untold--

The face we see was never young,

Nor could it wholly have been old.

For he, to whom we had applied

Our shopman's test of age and worth,

Was elemental when he died

As he was ancient at his birth:

The saddest among kings of earth,

Bowed with a galling crown, this man

Met rancor with a cryptic mirth,

Laconic--and Olympian.

The love, the grandeur, and the fame

Are bounded by the world alone;

The calm, the smouldering, and the flame

Of awful patience were his own:

With him they are forever flown

Past all our fond self-shadowings,

Wherewith we cumber the Unknown

As with inept Icarian wings.

For we were not as other men:

'Twas ours to soar and his to see.

But we are coming down again,

And we shall come down pleasantly;

Nor shall we longer disagree

On what it is to be sublime,

But flourish in our pedigree

And have one Titan at a time.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

11th stanza, line 2: c/Ther merciles/The merciless/

Cassandra

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.

"You build it altars tall enough

To make you see but you are blind;

You cannot leave it long enough

To look before you or behind.

"When Reason beckons you to pause,

You laugh and say that you know best;

But what it is you know, you keep

As dark as ingots in a chest.

"You laugh and answer, 'We are young;

Oh, leave us now, and let us grow:'

Not asking how much more of this

Will Time endure or Fate bestow.

"Because a few complacent years

Have made your peril of your pride,

Think you that you are to go on

Forever pampered and untried?

"What lost eclipse of history,

What bivouac of the marching stars,

Has given the sign for you to see

Milleniums and last great wars?

"What unrecorded overthrow

Of all the world has ever known,

Or ever been, has made itself

So plain to you, and you alone?

"Your Dollar, Dove, and Eagle make

A Trinity that even you

Rate higher than you rate yourselves;

It pays, it flatters, and it's new.

"And though your very flesh and blood

Be what the Eagle eats and drinks,

You'll praise him for the best of birds,

Not knowing what the eagle thinks.

"The power is yours, but not the sight;

You see not upon what you tread;

You have the ages for your guide,

But not the wisdom to be led.

"Think you to tread forever down

The merciless old verities?

And are you never to have eyes

To see the world for what it is?

"Are you to pay for what you have

With all you are?"--No other word

We caught, but with a laughing crowd

Moved on. None heeded, and few heard.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Firelight

TEN years together without yet a cloud

They seek each other's eyes at intervals

Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls

For love's obliteration of the crowd.

Serenely and perennially endowed

And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls

No snake, no sword; and over them there falls

The blessing of what neither says aloud.

Wiser for silence, they were not so glad

Were she to read the graven tale of lines

On the wan face of one somewhere alone;

Nor were they more content could he have had

Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines

Apart, and would be hers if he had known.

Edwin Arlington Robinson