Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

  For you to fill with more than it will hold?

  If so, you needn’t crown yourself at once 185

  With epic laurel if you seem to fill it.

  Horrors, I say, for in the fires and forks

  Of a new hell — if one were not enough —

  I doubt if a new horror would have held him

  With a malignant ingenuity 190

  More to be feared than his before he died.

  You smile, as if in doubt. Well, smile again.

  Now come into his house, along with me:

  The four square sombre things that you see first

  Around you are four walls that go as high 195

  As to the ceiling. Norcross knew them well,

  And he knew others like them. Fasten to that

  With all the claws of your intelligence;

  And hold the man before you in his house

  As if he were a white rat in a box, 200

  And one that knew himself to be no other.

  I tell you twice that he knew all about it,

  That you may not forget the worst of all

  Our tragedies begin with what we know.

  Could Norcross only not have known, I wonder 205

  How many would have blessed and envied him!

  Could he have had the usual eye for spots

  On others, and for none upon himself,

  I smile to ponder on the carriages

  That might as well as not have clogged the town 210

  In honor of his end. For there was gold,

  You see, though all he needed was a little,

  And what he gave said nothing of who gave it.

  He would have given it all if in return

  There might have been a more sufficient face 215

  To greet him when he shaved. Though you insist

  It is the dower, and always, of our degree

  Not to be cursed with such invidious insight,

  Remember that you stand, you and your fancy,

  Now in his house; and since we are together, 220

  See for yourself and tell me what you see.

  Tell me the best you see. Make a slight noise

  Of recognition when you find a book

  That you would not as lief read upside down

  As otherwise, for example. If there you fail, 225

  Observe the walls and lead me to the place,

  Where you are led. If there you meet a picture

  That holds you near it for a longer time

  Than you are sorry, you may call it yours,

  And hang it in the dark of your remembrance, 230

  Where Norcross never sees. How can he see

  That has no eyes to see? And as for music,

  He paid with empty wonder for the pangs

  Of his infrequent forced endurance of it;

  And having had no pleasure, paid no more 235

  For needless immolation, or for the sight

  Of those who heard what he was never to hear.

  To see them listening was itself enough

  To make him suffer; and to watch worn eyes,

  On other days, of strangers who forgot 240

  Their sorrows and their failures and themselves

  Before a few mysterious odds and ends

  Of marble carted from the Parthenon —

  And all for seeing what he was never to see,

  Because it was alive and he was dead — 245

  Here was a wonder that was more profound

  Than any that was in fiddles and brass horns.

  “He knew, and in his knowledge there was death.

  He knew there was a region all around him

  That lay outside man’s havoc and affairs, 250

  And yet was not all hostile to their tumult,

  Where poets would have served and honored him,

  And saved him, had there been anything to save.

  But there was nothing, and his tethered range

  Was only a small desert. Kings of song 255

  Are not for thrones in deserts. Towers of sound

  And flowers of sense are but a waste of heaven

  Where there is none to know them from the rocks

  And sand-grass of his own monotony

  That makes earth less than earth. He could see that, 260

  And he could see no more. The captured light

  That may have been or not, for all he cared,

  The song that is in sculpture was not his,

  But only, to his God-forgotten eyes,

  One more immortal nonsense in a world 265

  Where all was mortal, or had best be so,

  And so be done with. ‘Art,’ he would have said,

  ‘Is not life, and must therefore be a lie;’

  And with a few profundities like that

  He would have controverted and dismissed 270

  The benefit of the Greeks. He had heard of them,

  As he had heard of his aspiring soul —

  Never to the perceptible advantage,

  In his esteem, of either. ‘Faith,’ he said,

  Or would have said if he had thought of it, 275

  ‘Lives in the same house with Philosophy,

  Where the two feed on scraps and are forlorn

  As orphans after war. He could see stars,

  On a clear night, but he had not an eye

  To see beyond them. He could hear spoken words, 280

  But had no ear for silence when alone.

  He could eat food of which he knew the savor,

  But had no palate for the Bread of Life,

  That human desperation, to his thinking,

  Made famous long ago, having no other. 285

  Now do you see? Do you begin to see?”

  I told him that I did begin to see;

  And I was nearer than I should have been

  To laughing at his malign inclusiveness,

  When I considered that, with all our speed, 290

  We are not laughing yet at funerals.

  I see him now as I could see him then,

  And I see now that it was good for me,

  As it was good for him, that I was quiet;

  For Time’s eye was on Ferguson, and the shaft 295

  Of its inquiring hesitancy had touched him,

  Or so I chose to fancy more than once

  Before he told of Norcross. When the word

  Of his release (he would have called it so)

  Made half an inch of news, there were no tears 300

  That are recorded. Women there may have been

  To wish him back, though I should say, not knowing,

  The few there were to mourn were not for love,

  And were not lovely. Nothing of them, at least,

  Was in the meagre legend that I gathered 305

  Years after, when a chance of travel took me

  So near the region of his nativity

  That a few miles of leisure brought me there;

  For there I found a friendly citizen

  Who led me to his house among the trees 310

  That were above a railroad and a river.

  Square as a box and chillier than a tomb

  It was indeed, to look at or to live in —

  All which had I been told. “Ferguson died,”

  The stranger said, “and then there was an auction. 315

  I live here, but I’ve never yet been warm.

  Remember him? Yes, I remember him.

  I knew him — as a man may know a tree —

  For twenty years. He may have held himself

  A little high when he was here, but now … 320

  Yes, I remember Ferguson. Oh, yes.”

  Others, I found, remembered Ferguson,

  But none of them had heard of Tasker Norcross.

  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 5

  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 behind

  More light than was before them. Neither met 10

  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.

  Souvenir

  A VANISHED house that for an hour I knew

  By some forgotten chance when I was young

  Had once a glimmering window overhung

  With honeysuckle wet with evening dew.

  Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew, 5

  And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung

  Ferociously; and over me, among

  The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.

  Somewhere within there were dim presences

  Of days that hovered and of years gone by. 10

  I waited, and between their silences

  There was an evanescent faded noise;

  And though a child, I knew it was the voice

  Of one whose occupation was to die.

  Discovery

  WE told of him as one who should have soared

  And seen for us the devastating light

  Whereof there is not either day or night,

  And shared with us the glamour of the Word

  That fell once upon Amos to record 5

  For men at ease in Zion, when the sight

  Of ills obscured aggrieved him and the might

  Of Hamath was a warning of the Lord.

  Assured somehow that he would make us wise,

  Our pleasure was to wait; and our surprise 10

  Was hard when we confessed the dry return

  Of his regret. For we were still to learn

  That earth has not a school where we may go

  For wisdom, or for more than we may know.

  Firelight

  TEN years together without yet a cloud,

  They seek each other’s eyes at intervals

  Of gratefulness to firelight and four walls

  For love’s obliteration of the crowd.

  Serenely and perennially endowed 5

  And bowered as few may be, their joy recalls

  No snake, no sword; and over them there falls

  The blessing of what neither says aloud.

  Wiser for silence, they were not so glad

  Were she to read the graven tale of lines 10

  On the wan face of one somewhere alone;

  Nor were they more content could he have had

  Her thoughts a moment since of one who shines

  Apart, and would be hers if he had known.

  The New Tenants

  THE DAY was here when it was his to know

  How fared the barriers he had built between

  His triumph and his enemies unseen,

  For them to undermine and overthrow;

  And it was his no longer to forego 5

  The sight of them, insidious and serene,

  Where they were delving always and had been

  Left always to be vicious and to grow.

  And there were the new tenants who had come,

  By doors that were left open unawares, 10

  Into his house, and were so much at home

  There now that he would hardly have to guess,

  By the slow guile of their vindictiveness,

  What ultimate insolence would soon be theirs.

  Inferential

  ALTHOUGH I saw before me there the face

  Of one whom I had honored among men

  The least, and on regarding him again

  Would not have had him in another place,

  He fitted with an unfamiliar grace 5

  The coffin where I could not see him then

  As I had seen him and appraised him when

  I deemed him unessential to the race.

  For there was more of him than what I saw.

  And there was on me more than the old awe 10

  That is the common genius of the dead.

  I might as well have heard him: “Never mind;

  If some of us were not so far behind,

  The rest of us were not so far ahead.”

  The Rat

  AS often as he let himself be seen

  We pitied him, or scorned him, or deplored

  The inscrutable profusion of the Lord

  Who shaped as one of us a thing so mean —

  Who made him human when he might have been 5

  A rat, and so been wholly in accord

  With any other creature we abhorred

  As always useless and not always clean.

  Now he is hiding all alone somewhere,

  And in a final hole not ready then; 10

  For now he is among those over there

  Who are not coming back to us again.

  And we who do the fiction of our share

  Say less of rats and rather more of men.

  Rahel to Varnhagen

  NOTE. — Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriage — so far as he was concerned at any rate — appears to have been satisfactory.

  NOW you have read them all; or if not all,

  As many as in all conscience I should fancy

  To be enough. There are no more of them —

  Or none to burn your sleep, or to bring dreams

  Of devils. If these are not sufficient, surely 5

  You are a strange young man. I might live on

  Alone, and for another forty years,

  Or not quite forty, — are you happier now? —

  Always to ask if there prevailed elsewhere

  Another like yourself that would have held 10

  These aged hands as long as you have held them,

  Not once observing, for all I can see,

  How they are like your mother’s. Well, you have read

  His letters now, and you have heard me say

  That in them are the cinders of a passion 15

  That was my life; and you have not yet broken

  Your way out of my house, out of my sight, —

  Into the street. You are a strange young man.

  I know as much as that of you, for certain;

  And I’m already praying, for your sake, 20

  That you be not too strange. Too much of that

  May lead you bye and bye through gloomy lanes

  To a sad wilderness, where one may grope

  Alone, and always, or until he feels

  Ferocious and invisible animals 25

  That wait for men and eat them in the dark.

  Why do you sit there on the floor so long,

  Smiling at me while I try to be solemn?

  Do you not hear it said for your salvation,

  When I say truth? Are you, at four and twenty, 30

  So little deceived in us that you interpret

  The humor of a woman to be noticed

  As her choice between you and Acheron?

  Are you so unscathed yet as to infer

  That if a woman worries when a man, 35

  Or a man-child, has wet shoes on his feet

  She may as well commemorate with ashes

  The last eclipse of her tranquillity?

  If you look up at me and blink again,

  I shall not have to make you tell me lies 40

  To know the letters you have not been reading

  I see now that I may have had for nothing

  A most unpleasant shivering in my conscience

  When I laid open for your contemplation

  The wealth of my worn casket. If I did, 45

  The fault was not yours wholly. Search again<
br />
  This wreckage we may call for sport a face,

  And you may chance upon the price of havoc

  That I have paid for a few sorry stones

  That shine and have no light — yet once were stars, 50

  And sparkled on a crown. Little and weak

  They seem; and they are cold, I fear, for you.

  But they that once were fire for me may not

  Be cold again for me until I die;

  And only God knows if they may be then. 55

  There is a love that ceases to be love

  In being ourselves. How, then, are we to lose it?

  You that are sure that you know everything

  There is to know of love, answer me that.

  Well?… You are not even interested. 60

  Once on a far off time when I was young,

  I felt with your assurance, and all through me,

  That I had undergone the last and worst

  Of love’s inventions. There was a boy who brought

  The sun with him and woke me up with it, 65

  And that was every morning; every night

  I tried to dream of him, but never could,

  More than I might have seen in Adam’s eyes

  Their fond uncertainty when Eve began

  The play that all her tireless progeny 70

  Are not yet weary of. One scene of it

  Was brief, but was eternal while it lasted;

  And that was while I was the happiest

  Of an imaginary six or seven,

  Somewhere in history but not on earth, 75

  For whom the sky had shaken and let stars

  Rain down like diamonds. Then there were clouds,

  And a sad end of diamonds; whereupon

  Despair came, like a blast that would have brought

  Tears to the eyes of all the bears in Finland, 80

  And love was done. That was how much I knew.

  Poor little wretch! I wonder where he is

  This afternoon. Out of this rain, I hope.

  At last, when I had seen so many days

  Dressed all alike, and in their marching order, 85

  Go by me that I would not always count them,

  One stopped — shattering the whole file of Time,

  Or so it seemed; and when I looked again,

  There was a man. He struck once with his eyes,

  And then there was a woman. I, who had come 90