Edwin Arlington Robinson

“ The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her,
And hurled her down where the dead men stay.
A torturing silence of wan dismay—
Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying—
Then down they sank to slumber and sway
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.
Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway
Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying?—
Or does love still shudder and steel still slay,
Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying? ”

“ And end this murmur for the life we live?
And when we do so frantically strive
To win strange faith, why do we shun to know
That in love's elemental over-glow
God's wholeness gleams with light superlative? ”

“ 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.
VERLAINE
Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers
To touch the covered corpse of him that fled
The uplands for the fens and rioted
Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers?—
Come!—let the grass grow there; and leave his verse
To tell the story of the life he led. ”

“ Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough
And reptile skins of us whereon we set
The stigma of scared years—are we to get
Where atoms and the ages are one stuff.
Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste
Of life in the beneficence divine
Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine
That we have squandered in sin's frail distress,
Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste,
The mead of Thought’s prophetic endlessness. ”

“ And the scared night shudders at the brown owl’s cry;
The bleak reeds rattle as the winds whirl by,
And frayed leaves flutter through the clumped shrubs callow.
Chill dews clinging on the low cold mallow
Make a steel-keen shimmer where the spent stems lie;
Dun shades quiver down the lone long fallow,
And the scared night shudders at the brown owl’s cry.
Pale stars peering through the clouds' curled shallow
Make a thin still flicker in a foul round sky ”

“ The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled,
The strings that Nero fingered are all gone.
iii
We cannot crown ourselves with everything,
Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:—
No matter what we are, or what we sing,
Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.
FOR CALDERON
And now, my brother, it is time
For me to tell the truth to you:
To tell the story of a crime
As black as Mona's eyes were blue.—
Yes, here to-night, before I die,
I'll speak the words that burn in me ”

“ That women and men are on earth to travel
All on a different road. Hereafter
The roads may meet . . . I trust in something—
I know not what . . .
⁠Well, this was the way of it:—
Stung with the shame and the secret fury
That comes to the man who has thrown his pittance
Of self at a traitor's feet, I wandered
Weeks and weeks in a baffled frenzy,
Till at last the devil spoke. ”

“ We two may meet! . . . To-morrow! . . . To-morrow! . . .
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1896, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works. ”