The Mill

THE miller's wife had waited long,

The tea was cold, the fire was dead;

And there might yet be nothing wrong

In how he went and what he said:

"There are no millers any more,"

Was all that she heard him say;

And he had lingered at the door

So long it seemed like yesterday.

Sick with a fear that had no form

She knew that she was there at last;

And in the mill there was a warm

And mealy fragrance of the past.

What else there was would only seem

To say again what he had meant;

And what was hanging from a beam

Would not have heeded where she went.

And if she thought it followed her,

She may have reasoned in the dark

That one way of the few there were

Would hide her and would leave no mark:

Black water, smooth above the weir

Like starry velvet in the night,

Though ruffled once, would soon appear

The same as ever to the sight.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Flying Dutchman

UNYIELDING in the pride of his defiance,

Afloat with none to serve or to command,

Lord of himself at last, adn all by Science,

He seeks the Vanished Land.

Alone, by the one light of his one thought,

He steers to find the shore from which he came,

Fearless of in what coil he may be caught

On seas that have no name.

Into the night he sails, and after night

There is a dawning, thought there be no sun;

Wherefore, with nothing but himself in sight,

Unsighted, he sails on.

At last there is a lifting of the cloud

Between the flood before him and the sky;

And then--though he may curse the Power aloud

That has no power to die--

He steers himself away from what is haunted

By the old ghost of what has been before,--

Abandoning, as always, and undaunted,

One fog-walled island more.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Tact

OBSERVANT of the way she told

So much of what was true,

No vanity could long withhold

Regard that was her due:

She spared him the familiar guile,

So easily achieved,

That only made a man to smile

And left him undeceived.

Aware that all imagining

Of more than what she meant

Would urge an end of everything,

He stayed; and when he went,

They parted with a merry word

That was to him as light

As any that was ever heard

Upon a starry night.

She smiled a little, knowing well

That he would not remark

The ruins of a day that fell

Around her in the dark:

He saw no ruins anywhere,

Nor fancied there were scars

On anyone who lingered there,

Alone below the stars.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

A Song at Shannon's

TWO men came out of Shannon's, having known

The faces of each other for as long

As they had listened there to an old song,

Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone

By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown

Too many times and with a wing too strong

To save himself, and so done heavy wrong

To more frail elements than his alone.

Slowly away they went, leaving alone behind

More light than was before them. Neither met

The other's eyes again or said a word.

Each to his loneliness or to his kind,

Went his own way, and with his own regret,

Not knowing what the other may have heard.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Vain Gratuities

NEVER was there a man much uglier

In eyes of other women, or more grim:

"The Lord has filled her chalice to the brim,

So let us pray she's a philosopher,"

They said; and there was more they said of her--

Deeming it, after twenty years with him,

No wonder that she kept her figure slim

And always made you think of lavender.

But she, demure as ever, and as fair,

Almost, as they remembered her before

She found him, would have laughed had she been there,

And all they said would have been heard no more

Than foam that washes on an island shore

Where there are none to listen or to care.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Lost Anchors

LIKE a dry fish flung inland far from shore,

There lived a sailor, warped and ocean-browned,

Who told of an old vessel, harbor-drowned,

And out of mind a century before,

Where divers, on descending to explore

A legend that had lived its way around

The world of ships, in the dark hulk had found

Anchors, which had been seized and seen no more.

Improving a dry leiure to invest

Their misadventure with a manifest

Analogy that he may read who runs,

The sailor made it old as ocean grass--

Telling of much that once had come to pass

With him, whose mother should have had no sons.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Afterthoughts

WE parted where the old gas-lamp still burned

Under the wayside maple and walked on,

Into the dark, as we had always done;

And I, no doubt, if he had not returned,

Might yet be unaware that he had earned

More than earth gives to many who have won

More than it has to give when they are gone--

As duly and indelibly I learned.

The sum of all that he came back to say

Was little then, and would be less today:

With him there were no Delphic heights to climb,

Yet his were somehow nearer the sublime.

He spoke, and went again by the old way--

Not knowing it would be for the last time.

Edwin Arlington Robinson