Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

  And then your spider gets him in her net,

  And eats him out, and hangs him up to dry. 295

  That’s Nature, the kind mother of us all.

  And then your slattern housemaid swings her broom,

  And where’s your spider? And that’s Nature, also.

  It’s Nature, and it’s Nothing. It’s all Nothing.

  It’s all a world where bugs and emperors 300

  Go singularly back to the same dust,

  Each in his time; and the old, ordered stars

  That sang together, Ben, will sing the same

  Old stave tomorrow.”

  When he talks like that, 305

  There’s nothing for a human man to do

  But lead him to some grateful nook like this

  Where we be now, and there to make him drink.

  He’ll drink, for love of me, and then be sick;

  A sad sign always in a man of parts, 310

  And always very ominous. The great

  Should be as large in liquor as in love, —

  And our great friend is not so large in either:

  One disaffects him, and the other fails him;

  Whatso he drinks that has an antic in it, 315

  He’s wondering what’s to pay in his insides;

  And while his eyes are on the Cyprian

  He’s fribbling all the time with that damned House.

  We laugh here at his thrift, but after all

  It may be thrift that saves him from the devil; 320

  God gave it, anyhow, — and we’ll suppose

  He knew the compound of his handiwork.

  Today the clouds are with him, but anon

  He’ll out of ’em enough to shake the tree

  Of life itself and bring down fruit unheard-of, — 325

  And, throwing in the bruised and whole together,

  Prepare a wine to make us drunk with wonder;

  And if he live, there’ll be a sunset spell

  Thrown over him as over a glassed lake

  That yesterday was all a black wild water. 330

  God send he live to give us, if no more,

  What now’s a-rampage in him, and exhibit,

  With a decent half-allegiance to the ages

  An earnest of at least a casual eye

  Turned once on what he owes to Gutenberg, 335

  And to the fealty of more centuries

  Than are as yet a picture in our vision.

  “There’s time enough, — I’ll do it when I’m old,

  And we’re immortal men,” he says to that;

  And then he says to me, “Ben, what’s ‘immortal’? 340

  Think you by any force of ordination

  It may be nothing of a sort more noisy

  Than a small oblivion of component ashes

  That of a dream-addicted world was once

  A moving atomy much like your friend here?” 345

  Nothing will help that man. To make him laugh,

  I said then he was a mad mountebank, —

  And by the Lord I nearer made him cry.

  I could have eat an eft then, on my knees,

  Tail, claws, and all of him; for I had stung 350

  The king of men, who had no sting for me,

  And I had hurt him in his memories;

  And I say now, as I shall say again,

  I love the man this side idolatry.

  He’ll do it when he’s old, he says. I wonder. 355

  He may not be so ancient as all that.

  For such as he, the thing that is to do

  Will do itself, — but there’s a reckoning;

  The sessions that are now too much his own,

  The roiling inward of a stilled outside, 360

  The churning out of all those blood-fed lines,

  The nights of many schemes and little sleep,

  The full brain hammered hot with too much thinking,

  The vexed heart over-worn with too much aching, —

  This weary jangling of conjoined affairs 365

  Made out of elements that have no end,

  And all confused at once, I understand,

  Is not what makes a man to live forever.

  O no, not now! He’ll not be going now:

  There’ll be time yet for God knows what explosions 370

  Before he goes. He’ll stay awhile. Just wait:

  Just wait a year or two for Cleopatra,

  For she’s to be a balsam and a comfort;

  And that’s not all a jape of mine now, either.

  For granted once the old way of Apollo 375

  Sings in a man, he may then, if he’s able,

  Strike unafraid whatever strings he will

  Upon the last and wildest of new lyres;

  Nor out of his new magic, though it hymn

  The shrieks of dungeoned hell, shall he create 380

  A madness or a gloom to shut quite out

  A cleaving daylight, and a last great calm

  Triumphant over shipwreck and all storms.

  He might have given Aristotle creeps,

  But surely would have given him his katharsis. 385

  He’ll not be going yet. There’s too much yet

  Unsung within the man. But when he goes,

  I’d stake ye coin o’ the realm his only care

  For a phantom world he sounded and found wanting

  Will be a portion here, a portion there, 390

  Of this or that thing or some other thing

  That has a patent and intrinsical

  Equivalence in those egregious shillings.

  And yet he knows, God help him! Tell me, now,

  If ever there was anything let loose 395

  On earth by gods or devils heretofore

  Like this mad, careful, proud, indifferent Shakespeare!

  Where was it, if it ever was? By heaven,

  ’Twas never yet in Rhodes or Pergamon —

  In Thebes or Nineveh, a thing like this! 400

  No thing like this was ever out of England;

  And that he knows. I wonder if he cares.

  Perhaps he does.… O Lord, that House in Stratford!

  Eros Turannos

  SHE fears him, and will always ask

  What fated her to choose him;

  She meets in his engaging mask

  All reasons to refuse him;

  But what she meets and what she fears 5

  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, 10

  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, 15

  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; 20

  And all her doubts of what he says

  Are dimmed with what she knows of days —

  Till even prejudice delays

  And fades, and she secures him.

  The falling leaf inaugurates 25

  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, 30

  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 35

  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 bee
n,

  Or what they are or would be. 40

  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, 45

  Or like a changed familiar tree,

  Or like a stairway to the sea

  Where down the blind are driven.

  Old Trails

  (WASHINGTON SQUARE)

  I MET him, as one meets a ghost or two,

  Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.

  “King Solomon was right, there’s nothing new,”

  Said he. “Behold a ruin who meant well.”

  He led me down familiar steps again, 5

  Appealingly, and set me in a chair.

  “My dreams have all come true to other men,”

  Said he; “God lives, however, and why care?

  “An hour among the ghosts will do no harm.”

  He laughed, and something glad within me sank. 10

  I may have eyed him with a faint alarm,

  For now his laugh was lost in what he drank.

  “They chill things here with ice from hell,” he said;

  “I might have known it.” And he made a face

  That showed again how much of him was dead, 15

  And how much was alive and out of place.

  And out of reach. He knew as well as I

  That all the words of wise men who are skilled

  In using them are not much to defy

  What comes when memory meets the unfulfilled. 20

  What evil and infirm perversity

  Had been at work with him to bring him back?

  Never among the ghosts, assuredly,

  Would he originate a new attack;

  Never among the ghosts, or anywhere, 25

  Till what was dead of him was put away,

  Would he attain to his offended share

  Of honor among others of his day.

  “You ponder like an owl,” he said at last;

  “You always did, and here you have a cause. 30

  For I’m a confirmation of the past,

  A vengeance, and a flowering of what was.

  “Sorry? Of course you are, though you compress,

  With even your most impenetrable fears,

  A placid and a proper consciousness 35

  Of anxious angels over my arrears.

  “I see them there against me in a book

  As large as hope, in ink that shines by night

  Surely I see; but now I’d rather look

  At you, and you are not a pleasant sight. 40

  “Forbear, forgive. Ten years are on my soul,

  And on my conscience. I’ve an incubus:

  My one distinction, and a parlous toll

  To glory; but hope lives on clamorous.

  “’Twas hope, though heaven I grant you knows of what — 45

  The kind that blinks and rises when it falls,

  Whether it sees a reason why or not —

  That heard Broadway’s hard-throated siren-calls;

  “’Twas hope that brought me through December storms,

  To shores again where I’ll not have to be 50

  A lonely man with only foreign worms

  To cheer him in his last obscurity.

  “But what it was that hurried me down here

  To be among the ghosts, I leave to you.

  My thanks are yours, no less, for one thing clear: 55

  Though you are silent, what you say is true.

  “There may have been the devil in my feet,

  For down I blundered, like a fugitive,

  To find the old room in Eleventh Street.

  God save us! — I came here again to live.” 60

  We rose at that, and all the ghosts rose then,

  And followed us unseen to his old room.

  No longer a good place for living men

  We found it, and we shivered in the gloom.

  The goods he took away from there were few, 65

  And soon we found ourselves outside once more,

  Where now the lamps along the Avenue

  Bloomed white for miles above an iron floor.

  “Now lead me to the newest of hotels,”

  He said, “and let your spleen be undeceived: 70

  This ruin is not myself, but some one else;

  I haven’t failed; I’ve merely not achieved.”

  Whether he knew or not, he laughed and dined

  With more of an immune regardlessness

  Of pits before him and of sands behind 75

  Than many a child at forty would confess;

  And after, when the bells in Boris rang

  Their tumult at the Metropolitan,

  He rocked himself, and I believe he sang.

  “God lives,” he crooned aloud, “and I’m the man!” 80

  He was. And even though the creature spoiled

  All prophecies, I cherish his acclaim.

  Three weeks he fattened; and five years he toiled

  In Yonkers, — and then sauntered into fame.

  And he may go now to what streets he will — 85

  Eleventh, or the last, and little care;

  But he would find the old room very still

  Of evenings, and the ghosts would all be there.

  I doubt if he goes after them; I doubt

  If many of them ever come to him. 90

  His memories are like lamps, and they go out;

  Or if they burn, they flicker and are dim.

  A light of other gleams he has to-day

  And adulations of applauding hosts;

  A famous danger, but a safer way 95

  Than growing old alone among the ghosts.

  But we may still be glad that we were wrong:

  He fooled us, and we’d shrivel to deny it;

  Though sometimes when old echoes ring too long,

  I wish the bells in Boris would be quiet. 100

  The Unforgiven

  WHEN he, who is the unforgiven,

  Beheld her first, he found her fair:

  No promise ever dreamt in heaven

  Could then have lured him anywhere

  That would have been away from there; 5

  And all his wits had lightly striven,

  Foiled with her voice, and eyes, and hair.

  There’s nothing in the saints and sages

  To meet the shafts her glances had,

  Or such as hers have had for ages 10

  To blind a man till he be glad,

  And humble him till he be mad.

  The story would have many pages,

  And would be neither good nor bad.

  And, having followed, you would find him 15

  Where properly the play begins;

  But look for no red light behind him —

  No fumes of many-colored sins,

  Fanned high by screaming violins.

  God knows what good it was to blind him, 20

  Or whether man or woman wins.

  And by the same eternal token,

  Who knows just how it will all end? —

  This drama of hard words unspoken,

  This fireside farce, without a friend 25

  Or enemy to comprehend

  What augurs when two lives are broken,

  And fear finds nothing left to mend.

  He stares in vain for what awaits him,

  And sees in Love a coin to toss; 30

  He smiles, and her cold hush berates him

  Beneath his hard half of the cross;

  They wonder why it ever was;

  And she, the unforgiving, hates him

  More for her lack than for her loss. 35

  He feeds with pride his indecision,

  And shrinks from what will not occur,

  Bequeathing with infirm derision

  His ashes to the days that were,

  Before she made him
prisoner; 40

  And labors to retrieve the vision

  That he must once have had of her.

  He waits, and there awaits an ending,

  And he knows neither what nor when;

  But no magicians are attending 45

  To make him see as he saw then,

  And he will never find again

  The face that once had been the rending

  Of all his purpose among men.

  He blames her not, nor does he chide her, 50

  And she has nothing new to say;

  If he were Bluebeard he could hide her,

  But that’s not written in the play,

  And there will be no change today;

  Although, to the serene outsider, 55

  There still would seem to be a way.

  Theophilus

  BY what serene malevolence of names

  Had you the gift of yours, Theophilus?

  Not even a smeared young Cyclops at his games

  Would have you long, — and you are one of us.

  Told of your deeds I shudder for your dream 5

  And they, no doubt, are few and innocent.

  Meanwhile, I marvel; for in you, it seems,

  Heredity outshines environment.

  What lingering bit of Belial, unforeseen,

  Survives and amplifies itself in you? 10

  What manner of devilry has ever been

  That your obliquity may never do?

  Humility befits a father’s eyes,

  But not a friend of us would have him weep.

  Admiring everything that lives and dies, 15

  Theophilus, we like you best asleep.

  Sleep — sleep; and let us find another man

  To lend another name less hazardous:

  Caligula, maybe, or Caliban,

  Or Cain, — but surely not Theophilus. 20

  Veteran Sirens

  THE GHOST of Ninon would be sorry now

  To laugh at them, were she to see them here,

  So brave and so alert for learning how

  To fence with reason for another year.

  Age offers a far comelier diadem 5