One of the sounds of life that I remember,
Though I forget so many that rang first
As if they were thrown down to me from Sinai.
So I remember, even to this day, 375
Just how they sounded, how they placed themselves,
And how the game went on while I made marks
And crossed them out, and meanwhile made some Trojans.
Likewise I made Ulysses, after Isaac,
And a little after Flaxman. Archibald 380
Was injured when he found himself left out,
But he had no heroics, and I said so:
I told him that his white beard was too long
And too straight down to be like things in Homer.
“Quite so,” said Isaac.— “Low,” said Archibald; 385
And he threw down a deuce with a deep grin
That showed his yellow teeth and made me happy.
So they played on till a bell rang from the door,
And Archibald said, “Supper.” — After that
The old men smoked while I sat watching them 390
And wondered with all comfort what might come
To me, and what might never come to me;
And when the time came for the long walk home
With Isaac in the twilight, I could see
The forest and the sunset and the sky-line, 395
No matter where it was that I was looking:
The flame beyond the boundary, the music,
The foam and the white ships, and two old men
Were things that would not leave me. — And that night
There came to me a dream — a shining one, 400
With two old angels in it. They had wings,
And they were sitting where a silver light
Suffused them, face to face. The wings of one
Began to palpitate as I approached,
But I was yet unseen when a dry voice 405
Cried thinly, with unpatronizing triumph,
“I’ve got you, Isaac; high, low, jack, and the game.”
Isaac and Archibald have gone their way
To the silence of the loved and well-forgotten.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them; 410
But there’s a laughing that has honor in it,
And I have no regret for light words now.
Rather I think sometimes they may have made
Their sport of me; — but they would not do that,
They were too old for that. They were old men, 415
And I may laugh at them because I knew them.
The Return of Morgan and Fingal
AND there we were together again —
Together again, we three:
Morgan, Fingal, fiddle, and all,
They had come for the night with me.
The spirit of joy was in Morgan’s wrist, 5
There were songs in Fingal’s throat;
And secure outside, for the spray to drench,
Was a tossed and empty boat.
And there were the pipes, and there was the punch,
And somewhere were twelve years; 10
So it came, in the manner of things unsought,
That a quick knock vexed our ears.
The night wind hovered and shrieked and snarled,
And I heard Fingal swear;
Then I opened the door — but I found no more 15
Than a chalk-skinned woman there.
I looked, and at last, “What is it?” I said —
“What is it that we can do?”
But never a word could I get from her
But “You — you three — it is you!” 20
Now the sense of a crazy speech like that
Was more than a man could make;
So I said, “But we — we are what, we three?”
And I saw the creature shake.
“Be quick!” she cried, “for I left her dead — 25
And I was afraid to come;
But you, you three — God made it be —
Will ferry the dead girl home.
“Be quick! be quick! — but listen to that
Who is that makes it? — hark!” 30
But I heard no more than a knocking splash
And a wind that shook the dark.
“It is only the wind that blows,” I said,
“And the boat that rocks outside.”
And I watched her there, and I pitied her there — 35
“Be quick! be quick!” she cried.
She cried so loud that her voice went in
To find where my two friends were;
So Morgan came, and Fingal came,
And out we went with her. 40
‘T was a lonely way for a man to take
And a fearsome way for three;
And over the water, and all day long,
They had come for the night with me.
But the girl was dead, as the woman had said, 45
And the best we could see to do
Was to lay her aboard. The north wind roared,
And into the night we flew.
Four of us living and one for a ghost,
Furrowing crest and swell, 50
Through the surge and the dark, for that faint far spark,
We ploughed with Azrael.
Three of us ruffled and one gone mad,
Crashing to south we went;
And three of us there were too spattered to care 55
What this late sailing meant.
So down we steered and along we tore
Through the flash of the midnight foam:
Silent enough to be ghosts on guard.
We ferried the dead girl home. 60
We ferried her down to the voiceless wharf,
And we carried her up to the light;
And we left the two to the father there,
Who counted the coals that night.
Then back we steered through the foam again, 65
But our thoughts were fast and few;
And all we did was to crowd the surge
And to measure the life we knew; —
Till at last we came where a dancing gleam
Skipped out to us, we three, — 70
And the dark wet mooring pointed home
Like a finger from the sea.
Then out we pushed the teetering skiff
And in we drew to the stairs;
And up we went, each man content 75
With a life that fed no cares.
Fingers were cold and feet were cold,
And the tide was cold and rough;
But the light was warm, and the room was warm,
And the world was good enough. 80
And there were the pipes, and there was the punch,
More shrewd than Satan’s tears:
Fingal had fashioned it, all by himself,
With a craft that comes of years.
And there we were together again — 85
Together again, we three:
Morgan, Fingal, fiddle, and all,
They were there for the night with me.
Aunt Imogen
AUNT IMOGEN was coming, and therefore
The children — Jane, Sylvester, and Young George —
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,
And she was in it only for four weeks 5
In fifty-two. But those great bites of time
Made all September a Queen’s Festival;
And they would strive, informally, to make
The most of them. — The mother understood,
And wisely stepped away. Aunt Imogen 10
Was there for only one month in the year,
While she, the mother, — she was always there;
And that was what made all the difference.
She knew it must be so, for Jane had once
Expounded it to her so learnedly 15
That she had looked awa
y from the child’s eyes
And thought; and she had thought of many things.
There was a demonstration every time
Aunt Imogen appeared, and there was more
Than one this time. And she was at a loss 20
Just how to name the meaning of it all:
It puzzled her to think that she could be
So much to any crazy thing alive —
Even to her sister’s little savages
Who knew no better than to be themselves; 25
But in the midst of her glad wonderment
She found herself besieged and overcome
By two tight arms and one tumultuous head,
And therewith half bewildered and half pained
By the joy she felt and by the sudden love 30
That proved itself in childhood’s honest noise.
Jane, by the wings of sex, had reached her first;
And while she strangled her, approvingly,
Sylvester thumped his drum and Young George howled.
But finally, when all was rectified, 35
And she had stilled the clamor of Young George
By giving him a long ride on her shoulders,
They went together into the old room
That looked across the fields; and Imogen
Gazed out with a girl’s gladness in her eyes, 40
Happy to know that she was back once more
Where there were those who knew her, and at last
Had gloriously got away again
From cabs and clattered asphalt for a while;
And there she sat and talked and looked and laughed 45
And made the mother and the children laugh.
Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh.
There was the feminine paradox — that she
Who had so little sunshine for herself
Should have so much for others. How it was 50
That she could make, and feel for making it,
So much of joy for them, and all along
Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled,
That hungering incompleteness and regret —
That passionate ache for something of her own, 55
For something of herself — she never knew.
She knew that she could seem to make them all
Believe there was no other part of her
Than her persistent happiness; but the why
And how she did not know. Still none of them 60
Could have a thought that she was living down —
Almost as if regret were criminal,
So proud it was and yet so profitless —
The penance of a dream, and that was good.
Her sister Jane — the mother of little Jane, 65
Sylvester, and Young George — might make herself
Believe she knew, for she — well, she was Jane.
Young George, however, did not yield himself
To nourish the false hunger of a ghost
That made no good return. He saw too much: 70
The accumulated wisdom of his years
Had so conclusively made plain to him
The permanent profusion of a world
Where everybody might have everything
To do, and almost everything to eat, 75
That he was jubilantly satisfied
And all unthwarted by adversity.
Young George knew things. The world, he had found out,
Was a good place, and life was a good game —
Particularly when Aunt Imogen 80
Was in it. And one day it came to pass —
One rainy day when she was holding him
And rocking him — that he, in his own right,
Took it upon himself to tell her so;
And something in his way of telling it — 85
The language, or the tone, or something else —
Gripped like insidious fingers on her throat,
And then went foraging as if to make
A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved
And unsophisticated confidence 90
Went mercilessly home; and had she sat
Before a looking glass, the deeps of it
Could not have shown more clearly to her then
Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown,
The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes 95
With anguish and intolerable mist.
The blow that she had vaguely thrust aside
Like fright so many times had found her now:
Clean-thrust and final it had come to her
From a child’s lips at last, as it had come 100
Never before, and as it might be felt
Never again. Some grief, like some delight,
Stings hard but once: to custom after that
The rapture or the pain submits itself,
And we are wiser than we were before. 105
And Imogen was wiser; though at first
Her dream-defeating wisdom was indeed
A thankless heritage: there was no sweet,
No bitter now; nor was there anything
To make a daily meaning for her life — 110
Till truth, like Harlequin, leapt out somehow
From ambush and threw sudden savor to it —
But the blank taste of time. There were no dreams,
No phantoms in her future any more:
One clinching revelation of what was 115
One by-flash of irrevocable chance,
Had acridly but honestly foretold
The mystical fulfilment of a life
That might have once … But that was all gone by:
There was no need of reaching back for that: 120
The triumph was not hers: there was no love
Save borrowed love: there was no might have been.
But there was yet Young George — and he had gone
Conveniently to sleep, like a good boy;
And there was yet Sylvester with his drum, 125
And there was frowzle-headed little Jane;
And there was Jane the sister, and the mother, —
Her sister, and the mother of them all.
They were not hers, not even one of them:
She was not born to be so much as that, 130
For she was born to be Aunt Imogen.
Now she could see the truth and look at it;
Now she could make stars out where once had palled
A future’s emptiness; now she could share
With others — ah, the others! — to the end 135
The largess of a woman who could smile;
Now it was hers to dance the folly down,
And all the murmuring; now it was hers
To be Aunt Imogen. — So, when Young George
Woke up and blinked at her with his big eyes, 140
And smiled to see the way she blinked at him,
‘T was only in old concord with the stars
That she took hold of him and held him close,
Close to herself, and crushed him till he laughed.
The Klondike
NEVER mind the day we left, or the day the women clung to us;
All we need now is the last way they looked at us.
Never mind the twelve men there amid the cheering —
Twelve men or one man, ‘t will soon be all the same;
For this is what we know: we are five men together, 5
Five left o’ twelve men to find the golden river.
Far we came to find it out, but the place was here for all of us;
Far, far we came, and here we have the last of us.
We that were the front men, we that would be early,
We that had the faith, and the triumph in our eyes: 10
We that had the wrong road, twelve men together, —
Singing when the devil sang to find the golden river.
Say the gleam was not for us, but never say we doubted it;
/> Say the wrong road was right before we followed it.
We that were the front men, fit for all forage, — 15
Say that while we dwindle we are front men still;
For this is what we know tonight: we’re starving here together —
Starving on the wrong road to find the golden river.
Wrong, we say, but wait a little: hear him in the corner there;
He knows more than we, and he’ll tell us if we listen there — 20
He that fought the snow-sleep less than all the others
Stays awhile yet, and he knows where he stays:
Foot and hand a frozen clout, brain a freezing feather,
Still he’s here to talk with us and to the golden river.
“Flow,” he says, “and flow along, but you cannot flow away from us; 25
All the world’s ice will never keep you far from us;
Every man that heeds your call takes the way that leads him —
The one way that’s his way, and lives his own life:
Starve or laugh, the game goes on, and on goes the river;
Gold or no, they go their way — twelve men together. 30
“Twelve,” he says, “who sold their shame for a lure you call too fair for them —
You that laugh and flow to the same word that urges them:
Twelve who left the old town shining in the sunset,
Left the weary street and the small safe days:
Twelve who knew but one way out, wide the way or narrow: 35
Twelve who took the frozen chance and laid their lives on yellow.
“Flow by night and flow by day, nor ever once be seen by them;
Flow, freeze, and flow, till time shall hide the bones of them;
Laugh and wash their names away, leave them all forgotten,
Leave the old town to crumble where it sleeps; 40
Leave it there as they have left it, shining in the valley, —
Leave the town to crumble down and let the women marry.
“Twelve of us or five,” he says, “we know the night is on us now:
Five while we last, and we may as well be thinking now:
Thinking each his own thought, knowing, when the light comes, 45
Five left or none left, the game will not be lost.
Crouch or sleep, we go the way, the last way together:
Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson Page 17