Textarchiv - Edwin Arlington Robinson
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson
American poet. Born December 22, 1869 in Head Tide, Maine, United States. Died April 6, 1935 in New York City, New York, United States.
deJohn Brown
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/john-brown
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>Though for your sake I would not have you now<br />
So near to me tonight as now you are,<br />
God knows how much a stranger to my heart<br />
Was any cold word that I may have written;<br />
And you, poor woman that I made my wife,<br />
You have had more of loneliness, I fear,<br />
Than I—though I have been the most alone,<br />
Even when the most attended. So it was<br />
God set the mark of his inscrutable<br />
Necessity on one that was to grope,<br />
And serve, and suffer, and withal be glad<br />
For what was his, and is, and is to be,<br />
When his old bones, that are a burden now,<br />
Are saying what the man who carried them<br />
Had not the power to say. Bones in a grave,<br />
Cover them as they will with choking earth,<br />
May shout the truth to men who put them there,<br />
More than all orators. And so, my dear,<br />
Since you have cheated wisdom for the sake<br />
Of sorrow, let your sorrow be for you,<br />
This last of nights before the last of days,<br />
The lying ghost of what there is of me<br />
That is the most alive. There is no death<br />
For me in what they do. Their death it is<br />
They should heed most when the sun comes again<br />
To make them solemn. There are some I know<br />
Whose eyes will hardly see their occupation,<br />
For tears in them—and all for one old man;<br />
For some of them will pity this old man,<br />
Who took upon himself the work of God<br />
Because he pitied millions. That will be<br />
For them, I fancy, their compassionate<br />
Best way of saying what is best in them<br />
To say; for they can say no more than that,<br />
And they can do no more than what the dawn<br />
Of one more day shall give them light enough<br />
To do. But there are many days to be,<br />
And there are many men to give their blood,<br />
As I gave mine for them. May they come soon!</p>
<p>May they come soon, I say. And when they come,<br />
May all that I have said unheard be heard,<br />
Proving at last, or maybe not—no matter—<br />
What sort of madness was the part of me<br />
That made me strike, whether I found the mark<br />
Or missed it. Meanwhile, I've a strange content,<br />
A patience, and a vast indifference<br />
To what men say of me and what men fear<br />
To say. There was a work to be begun,<br />
And when the Voice, that I have heard so long,<br />
Announced as in a thousand silences<br />
An end of preparation, I began<br />
The coming work of death which is to be,<br />
That life may be. There is no other way<br />
Than the old way of war for a new land<br />
That will not know itself and is tonight<br />
A stranger to itself, and to the world<br />
A more prodigious upstart among states<br />
Than I was among men, and so shall be<br />
Till they are told and told, and told again;<br />
For men are children, waiting to be told,<br />
And most of them are children all their lives.<br />
The good God in his wisdom had them so,<br />
That now and then a madman or a seer<br />
May shake them out of their complacency<br />
And shame them into deeds. The major file<br />
See only what their fathers may have seen,<br />
Or may have said they saw when they saw nothing.<br />
I do not say it matters what they saw.<br />
Now and again to some lone soul or other<br />
God speaks, and there is hanging to be done,—<br />
As once there was a burning of our bodies<br />
Alive, albeit our souls were sorry fuel.<br />
But now the fires are few, and we are poised<br />
Accordingly, for the state's benefit,<br />
A few still minutes between heaven and earth.<br />
The purpose is, when they have seen enough<br />
Of what it is that they are not to see,<br />
To pluck me as an unripe fruit of treason,<br />
And then to fling me back to the same earth<br />
Of which they are, as I suppose, the flower—<br />
Not given to know the riper fruit that waits<br />
For a more comprehensive harvesting.</p>
<p>Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say,<br />
May they come soon!—before too many of them<br />
Shall be the bloody cost of our defection.<br />
When hell waits on the dawn of a new state,<br />
Better it were that hell should not wait long,—<br />
Or so it is I see it who should see<br />
As far or farther into time tonight<br />
Than they who talk and tremble for me now,<br />
Or wish me to those everlasting fires<br />
That are for me no fear. Too many fires<br />
Have sought me out and seared me to the bone—<br />
Thereby, for all I know, to temper me<br />
For what was mine to do. If I did ill<br />
What I did well, let men say I was mad;<br />
Or let my name for ever be a question<br />
That will not sleep in history. What men say<br />
I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword,<br />
Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was;<br />
And the long train is lighted that shall burn,<br />
Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet<br />
May stamp it for a slight time into smoke<br />
That shall blaze up again with growing speed,<br />
Until at last a fiery crash will come<br />
To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere,<br />
And heal it of a long malignity<br />
That angry time discredits and disowns.</p>
<p>Tonight there are men saying many things;<br />
And some who see life in the last of me<br />
Will answer first the coming call to death;<br />
For death is what is coming, and then life.<br />
I do not say again for the dull sake<br />
Of speech what you have heard me say before,<br />
But rather for the sake of all I am,<br />
And all God made of me. A man to die<br />
As I do must have done some other work<br />
Than man's alone. I was not after glory,<br />
But there was glory with me, like a friend,<br />
Throughout those crippling years when friends were few,<br />
And fearful to be known by their own names<br />
When mine was vilified for their approval.<br />
Yet friends they are, and they did what was given<br />
Their will to do; they could have done no more.<br />
I was the one man mad enough, it seems,<br />
To do my work; and now my work is over.<br />
And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me,<br />
Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn<br />
In Paradise, done with evil and with earth.<br />
There is not much of earth in what remains<br />
For you; and what there may be left of it<br />
For your endurance you shall have at last<br />
In peace, without the twinge of any fear<br />
For my condition; for I shall be done<br />
With plans and actions that have heretofore<br />
Made your days long and your nights ominous<br />
With darkness and the many distances<br />
That were between us. When the silence comes,<br />
I shall in faith be nearer to you then<br />
Than I am now in fact. What you see now<br />
Is only the outside of an old man,<br />
Older than years have made him. Let him die,<br />
And let him be a thing for little grief.<br />
There was a time for service, and he served;<br />
And there is no more time for anything<br />
But a short gratefulness to those who gave<br />
Their scared allegiance to an enterprise<br />
That has the name of treason —which will serve<br />
As well as any other for the present.<br />
There are some deeds of men that have no names,<br />
And mine may like as not be one of them.<br />
I am not looking far for names tonight.<br />
The King of Glory was without a name<br />
Until men gave him one; yet there He was,<br />
Before we found Him and affronted Him<br />
With numerous ingenuities of evil,<br />
Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept<br />
And washed out of the world with fire and blood.</p>
<p>Once I believed it might have come to pass<br />
With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming—<br />
Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard<br />
When I left you behind me in the north,—<br />
To wait there and to wonder and grow old<br />
Of loneliness,—told only what was best,<br />
And with a saving vagueness, I should know<br />
Till I knew more. And had I known even then—<br />
After grim years of search and suffering,<br />
So many of them to end as they began—<br />
After my sickening doubts and estimations<br />
Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain—<br />
After a weary delving everywhere<br />
For men with every virtue but the Vision—<br />
Could I have known, I say, before I left you<br />
That summer morning, all there was to know—<br />
Even unto the last consuming word<br />
That would have blasted every mortal answer<br />
As lightning would annihilate a leaf,<br />
I might have trembled on that summer morning;<br />
I might have wavered; and I might have failed.</p>
<p>And there are many among men today<br />
To say of me that I had best have wavered.<br />
So has it been, so shall it always be,<br />
For those of us who give ourselves to die<br />
Before we are so parcelled and approved<br />
As to be slaughtered by authority.<br />
We do not make so much of what they say<br />
As they of what our folly says of us;<br />
They give us hardly time enough for that,<br />
And thereby we gain much by losing little.<br />
Few are alive to-day with less to lose<br />
Than I who tell you this, or more to gain;<br />
And whether I speak as one to be destroyed<br />
For no good end outside his own destruction,<br />
Time shall have more to say than men shall hear<br />
Between now and the coming of that harvest<br />
Which is to come. Before it comes, I go—<br />
By the short road that mystery makes long<br />
For man's endurance of accomplishment.<br />
I shall have more to say when I am dead.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1922</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/john-brown" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="John Brown" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 21 Dec 2017 21:10:05 +0000mrbot8129 at https://www.textarchiv.comAlma Mater
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/alma-mater
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>He knocked, and I beheld him at the door—<br />
A vision for the gods to verify.<br />
"What battered ancientry is this," thought I,<br />
And when, if ever, did we meet before?"<br />
But ask him as I might, I got no more<br />
For answer than a moaning and a cry:<br />
Too late to parley, but in time to die,<br />
He staggered, and lay shapeless on the floor.<br />
When had I known him? And what brought him here?<br />
Love, warning, malediction, hunger, fear?<br />
Surely I never thwarted such as he?—<br />
Again, what soiled obscurity was this:<br />
Out of what scum, and up from what abyss,<br />
Had they arrived—these rags of memory?</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1910</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/alma-mater" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="Alma Mater" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Fri, 10 Nov 2017 21:10:04 +0000mrbot8873 at https://www.textarchiv.comClavering
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/clavering
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>I say no more for Clavering<br />
Than I should say of him who fails<br />
To bring his wounded vessel home<br />
When reft of rudder and of sails;</p>
<p>I say no more than I should say<br />
Of any other one who sees<br />
Too far for guidance of to-day,<br />
Too near for the eternities.</p>
<p>I think of him as I should think<br />
Of one who for scant wages played,<br />
And faintly, a flawed instrument<br />
That fell while it was being made;</p>
<p>I think of him as one who fared,<br />
Unfaltering and undeceived,<br />
Amid mirages of renown<br />
And urgings of the unachieved;</p>
<p>I think of him as one who gave<br />
To Lingard leave to be amused,<br />
And listened with a patient grace<br />
That we, the wise ones, had refused;</p>
<p>I think of metres that he wrote<br />
For Cubit, the ophidian guest:<br />
"What Lilith, or Dark Lady". . . Well,<br />
Time swallows Cubit with the rest.</p>
<p>I think of last words that he said<br />
One midnight over Calverly:<br />
"Good-by—good man." He was not good;<br />
So Clavering was wrong, you see.</p>
<p>I wonder what had come to pass<br />
Could he have borrowed for a spell<br />
The fiery-frantic indolence<br />
That made a ghost of Leffingwell;</p>
<p>I wonder if he pitied us<br />
Who cautioned him till he was gray<br />
To build his house with ours on earth<br />
And have an end of yesterday;</p>
<p>I wonder what it was we saw<br />
To make us think that we were strong;<br />
I wonder if he saw too much,<br />
Or if he looked one way too long.</p>
<p>But when were thoughts or wonderings<br />
To ferret out the man within?<br />
Why prate of what he seemed to be,<br />
And all that he might not have been?</p>
<p>He clung to phantoms and to friends,<br />
And never came to anything.<br />
He left a wreath on Cubit's grave.<br />
I say no more for Clavering.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1910</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/clavering" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="Clavering" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Sun, 29 Oct 2017 21:10:02 +0000mrbot8874 at https://www.textarchiv.comThe Dark Hills
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/the-dark-hills
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>Dark hills at evening in the west,<br />
Where sunset hovers like a sound<br />
Of golden horns that sang to rest<br />
Old bones of warriors under ground,<br />
Far now from all the bannered ways<br />
Where flash the legions of the sun,<br />
You fade—as if the last of days<br />
Were fading, and all wars were done.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1922</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/the-dark-hills" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="The Dark Hills" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Fri, 27 Oct 2017 21:10:05 +0000mrbot8125 at https://www.textarchiv.comThe Whip
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/the-whip
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>The doubt you fought so long,<br />
The cynic net you cast,<br />
The tyranny, the wrong,<br />
The ruin, they are past;<br />
And here you are at last,<br />
Your blood no longer vexed.<br />
The coffin has you fast,<br />
The clod will have you next.</p>
<p>But fear you not the clod,<br />
Nor ever doubt the grave:<br />
The roses and the sod<br />
Will not forswear the wave.<br />
The gift the river gave<br />
Is now but theirs to cover:<br />
The mistress and the slave<br />
Are gone now, and the lover.</p>
<p>You left the two to find<br />
Their own way to the brink:<br />
Then—shall I call you blind?—<br />
You chose to plunge and sink.<br />
God knows the gall we drink<br />
Is not the mead we cry for,<br />
Nor was it, I should think—<br />
For you—a thing to die for.</p>
<p>Could we have done the same,<br />
Had we been in your place?—<br />
This funeral of your name<br />
Throws no light on the case.—<br />
Could we have made the chase,<br />
And felt then as you felt?—<br />
But what's this on your face,<br />
Blue, curious, like a welt?</p>
<p>There were some ropes of sand<br />
Recorded long ago,<br />
But none, I understand,<br />
Of water. Is it so?<br />
And she—she struck the blow,<br />
You but a neck behind...<br />
You saw the river flow—<br />
Still, shall I call you blind?</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1910</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/the-whip" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="The Whip" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Mon, 23 Oct 2017 21:10:02 +0000mrbot8871 at https://www.textarchiv.comBon Voyage
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/bon-voyage
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>Child of a line accurst<br />
And old as Troy,<br />
Bringer of best and worst<br />
In wild alloy—<br />
Light, like a linnet first,<br />
He sang for joy.</p>
<p>Thrall to the gilded ease<br />
Of every day,<br />
Mocker of all degrees<br />
And always gay,<br />
Child of the Cyclades<br />
And of Broadway—</p>
<p>Laughing and half divine<br />
The boy began,<br />
Drunk with a woodland wine<br />
Thessalian:<br />
But there was rue to twine<br />
The pipes of Pan.</p>
<p>Therefore he skipped and flew<br />
The more along,<br />
Vivid and always new<br />
And always wrong,<br />
Knowing his only clew<br />
A siren song.</p>
<p>Careless of each and all<br />
He gave and spent:<br />
Feast or a funeral<br />
He laughed and went,<br />
Laughing to be so small<br />
In the event.</p>
<p>Told of his own deceit<br />
By many a tongue,<br />
Flayed for his long defeat<br />
By being young,<br />
Lured by the fateful sweet<br />
Of songs unsung—</p>
<p>Knowing it in his heart,<br />
But knowing not<br />
The secret of an art<br />
That few forgot,<br />
He played the twinkling part<br />
That was his lot.</p>
<p>And when the twinkle died,<br />
As twinkles do,<br />
He pushed himself aside<br />
And out of view:<br />
Out with the wind and tide,<br />
Before we knew.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1910</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/bon-voyage" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="Bon Voyage" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Fri, 20 Oct 2017 21:10:04 +0000mrbot8872 at https://www.textarchiv.comThe Rat
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/the-rat
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>As often as he let himself be seen<br />
We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored<br />
The inscrutable profusion of the Lord<br />
Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean—<br />
Who made him human when he might have been<br />
A rat, and so been wholly in accord<br />
With any other creature we abhorred<br />
As always useless and not always clean.</p>
<p>Now he is hiding all alone somewhere,<br />
And in a final hole not ready then;<br />
For now he is among those over there<br />
Who are not coming back to us again.<br />
And we who do the fiction of our share<br />
Say less of rats and rather more of men.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1922</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/the-rat" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="The Rat" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Thu, 17 Aug 2017 21:10:03 +0000mrbot8127 at https://www.textarchiv.comTact
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/tact
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>Observant of the way she told<br />
So much of what was true,<br />
No vanity could long withhold<br />
Regard that was her due:<br />
She spared him the familiar guile,<br />
So easily achieved,<br />
That only made a man to smile<br />
And left him undeceived.</p>
<p>Aware that all imagining<br />
Of more than what she meant<br />
Would urge an end of everything,<br />
He stayed; and when he went,<br />
They parted with a merry word<br />
That was to him as light<br />
As any that was ever heard<br />
Upon a starry night.</p>
<p>She smiled a little, knowing well<br />
That he would not remark<br />
The ruins of a day that fell<br />
Around her in the dark:<br />
He saw no ruins anywhere,<br />
Nor fancied there were scars<br />
On anyone who lingered there,<br />
Alone below the stars.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1922</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/tact" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="Tact" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Wed, 12 Jul 2017 19:34:48 +0000mrbot8128 at https://www.textarchiv.comPeace on Earth
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/peace-on-earth
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>He took a frayed hat from his head,<br />
And "Peace on Earth" was what he said.<br />
"A morsel out of what you're worth,<br />
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.<br />
Not much, although a little more<br />
Than what there was on earth before.<br />
I'm as you see, I'm Ichabod,—<br />
But never mind the ways I've trod;<br />
I'm sober now, so help me God."</p>
<p>I could not pass the fellow by.<br />
"Do you believe in God?" said I;<br />
"And is there to be Peace on Earth?"</p>
<p>"Tonight we celebrate the birth,"<br />
He said, "of One who died for men;<br />
The Son of God, we say. What then?<br />
Your God, or mine? I'd make you laugh<br />
Were I to tell you even half<br />
That I have learned of mine today<br />
Where yours would hardly seem to stay.<br />
Could He but follow in and out<br />
Some anthropoids I know about,<br />
The God to whom you may have prayed<br />
Might see a world He never made."</p>
<p>"Your words are flowing full," said I;<br />
"But yet they give me no reply;<br />
Your fountain might as well be dry."</p>
<p>"A wiser One than you, my friend,<br />
Would wait and hear me to the end;<br />
And for His eyes a light would shine<br />
Through this unpleasant shell of mine<br />
That in your fancy makes of me<br />
A Christmas curiosity.<br />
All right, I might be worse than that;<br />
And you might now be lying flat;<br />
I might have done it from behind,<br />
And taken what there was to find.<br />
Don't worry, for I'm not that kind.<br />
'Do I believe in God?' Is that<br />
The price tonight of a new hat?<br />
Has He commanded that His name<br />
Be written everywhere the same?<br />
Have all who live in every place<br />
Identified His hidden face?<br />
Who knows but He may like as well<br />
My story as one you may tell?<br />
And if He show me there be Peace<br />
On Earth, as there be fields and trees<br />
Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong<br />
If now I sing Him a new song?<br />
Your world is in yourself, my friend,<br />
For your endurance to the end;<br />
And all the Peace there is on Earth<br />
Is faith in what your world is worth,<br />
And saying, without any lies,<br />
Your world could not be otherwise."</p>
<p>"One might say that and then be shot,"<br />
I told him; and he said: "Why not?"<br />
I ceased, and gave him rather more<br />
Than he was counting of my store.<br />
"And since I have it, thanks to you,<br />
Don't ask me what I mean to do,"<br />
Said he. "Believe that even I<br />
Would rather tell the truth than lie—<br />
On Christmas Eve. No matter why."</p>
<p>His unshaved, educated face,<br />
His inextinguishable grace,<br />
And his hard smile, are with me still,<br />
Deplore the vision as I will;<br />
For whatsoever he be at,<br />
So droll a derelict as that<br />
Should have at least another hat.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1922</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/peace-on-earth" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="Peace on Earth" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Fri, 07 Jul 2017 19:11:51 +0000mrbot8126 at https://www.textarchiv.comNimmo
https://www.textarchiv.com/edwin-arlington-robinson/nimmo
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:text content:encoded"><p>Since you remember Nimmo, and arrive<br />
At such a false and florid and far drawn<br />
Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive<br />
No longer, though I may have led you on.</p>
<p>So much is told and heard and told again,<br />
So many with his legend are engrossed,<br />
That I, more sorry now than I was then,<br />
May live on to be sorry for his ghost.</p>
<p>You knew him, and you must have known his eyes,—<br />
How deep they were, and what a velvet light<br />
Came out of them when anger or surprise,<br />
Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright.</p>
<p>No, you will not forget such eyes, I think,—<br />
And you say nothing of them. Very well.<br />
I wonder if all history's worth a wink,<br />
Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell.</p>
<p>For they began to lose their velvet light;<br />
Their fire grew dead without and small within;<br />
And many of you deplored the needless fight<br />
That somewhere in the dark there must have been.</p>
<p>All fights are needless, when they're not our own,<br />
But Nimmo and Francesca never fought.<br />
Remember that; and when you are alone,<br />
Remember me—and think what I have thought.</p>
<p>Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was,<br />
Or never was, or could or could not be:<br />
Bring not suspicion's candle to the glass<br />
That mirrors a friend's face to memory.</p>
<p>Of what you see, see all,—but see no more;<br />
For what I show you here will not be there.<br />
The devil has had his way with paint before,<br />
And he's an artist,—and you needn't stare.</p>
<p>There was a painter and he painted well:<br />
He'd paint you Daniel in the lions' den,<br />
Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell.<br />
I'm coming back to Nimmo's eyes again.</p>
<p>The painter put the devil in those eyes,<br />
Unless the devil did, and there he stayed;<br />
And then the lady fled from paradise,<br />
And there's your fact. The lady was afraid.</p>
<p>She must have been afraid, or may have been,<br />
Of evil in their velvet all the while;<br />
But sure as I'm a sinner with a skin,<br />
I'll trust the man as long as he can smile.</p>
<p>I trust him who can smile and then may live<br />
In my heart's house, where Nimmo is today.<br />
God knows if I have more than men forgive<br />
To tell him; but I played, and I shall pay.</p>
<p>I knew him then, and if I know him yet,<br />
I know in him, defeated and estranged,<br />
The calm of men forbidden to forget<br />
The calm of women who have loved and changed.</p>
<p>But there are ways that are beyond our ways,<br />
Or he would not be calm and she be mute,<br />
As one by one their lost and empty days<br />
Pass without even the warmth of a dispute.</p>
<p>God help us all when women think they see;<br />
God save us when they do. I'm fair; but though<br />
I know him only as he looks to me,<br />
I know him,—and I tell Francesca so.</p>
<p>And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask<br />
Of him, could you but see him as I can,<br />
At his bewildered and unfruitful task<br />
Of being what he was born to be—a man.</p>
<p>Better forget that I said anything<br />
Of what your tortured memory may disclose;<br />
I know him, and your worst remembering<br />
Would count as much as nothing, I suppose.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, I trust him; and I know his way<br />
Of trusting me, as always in his youth.<br />
I'm painting here a better man, you say,<br />
Than I, the painter; and you say the truth.</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-author field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" rel="schema:author"><a href="/edwin-arlington-robinson" typeof="skos:Concept" property="schema:name" datatype="">Edwin Arlington Robinson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-releasedate field-type-number-integer field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even" property="schema:datePublished">1922</div></div></div><span rel="schema:url" resource="/edwin-arlington-robinson/nimmo" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span><span property="schema:name" content="Nimmo" class="rdf-meta element-hidden"></span>Fri, 23 Jun 2017 12:23:55 +0000mrbot8130 at https://www.textarchiv.com