Works of Edwin Arlington Robinson
Page 47
To wisdom, or to vision, or what you like,
By the old hidden road that has no name, —
I, who was used to seeing without flying
So much that others fly from without seeing,
Still looked, and was afraid, and looked again. 95
And after that, when I had read the story
Told in his eyes, and felt within my heart
The bleeding wound of their necessity,
I knew the fear was his. If I had failed him
And flown away from him, I should have lost 100
Ingloriously my wings in scrambling back,
And found them arms again. If he had struck me
Not only with his eyes but with his hands,
I might have pitied him and hated love,
And then gone mad. I, who have been so strong — 105
Why don’t you laugh? — might even have done all that.
I, who have learned so much, and said so much,
And had the commendations of the great
For one who rules herself — why don’t you cry? —
And own a certain small authority 110
Among the blind, who see no more than ever,
But like my voice, — I would have tossed it all
To Tophet for one man; and he was jealous.
I would have wound a snake around my neck
And then have let it bite me till I died, 115
If my so doing would have made me sure
That one man might have lived; and he was jealous.
I would have driven these hands into a cage
That held a thousand scorpions, and crushed them,
If only by so poisonous a trial 120
I could have crushed his doubt. I would have wrung
My living blood with mediaeval engines
Out of my screaming flesh, if only that
Would have made one man sure. I would have paid
For him the tiresome price of body and soul, 125
And let the lash of a tongue-weary town
Fall as it might upon my blistered name;
And while it fell I could have laughed at it,
Knowing that he had found out finally
Where the wrong was. But there was evil in him 130
That would have made no more of his possession
Than confirmation of another fault;
And there was honor — if you call it honor
That hoods itself with doubt and wears a crown
Of lead that might as well be gold and fire. 135
Give it as heavy or as light a name
As any there is that fits. I see myself
Without the power to swear to this or that
That I might be if he had been without it.
Whatever I might have been that I was not, 140
It only happened that it wasn’t so.
Meanwhile, you might seem to be listening:
If you forget yourself and go to sleep,
My treasure, I shall not say this again.
Look up once more into my poor old face, 145
Where you see beauty, or the Lord knows what,
And say to me aloud what else there is
Than ruins in it that you most admire.
No, there was never anything like that;
Nature has never fastened such a mask 150
Of radiant and impenetrable merit
On any woman as you say there is
On this one. Not a mask? I thank you, sir,
But you see more with your determination,
I fear, than with your prudence or your conscience; 155
And you have never met me with my eyes
In all the mirrors I’ve made faces at.
No, I shall never call you strange again:
You are the young and inconvincible
Epitome of all blind men since Adam. 160
May the blind lead the blind, if that be so?
And we shall need no mirrors? You are saying
What most I feared you might. But if the blind,
Or one of them, be not so fortunate
As to put out the eyes of recollection, 165
She might at last, without her meaning it,
Lead on the other, without his knowing it,
Until the two of them should lose themselves
Among dead craters in a lava-field
As empty as a desert on the moon. 170
I am not speaking in a theatre,
But in a room so real and so familiar
That sometimes I would wreck it. Then I pause,
Remembering there is a King in Weimar —
A monarch, and a poet, and a shepherd 175
Of all who are astray and are outside
The realm where they should rule. I think of him,
And save the furniture; I think of you,
And am forlorn, finding in you the one
To lavish aspirations and illusions 180
Upon a faded and forsaken house
Where love, being locked alone, was nigh to burning
House and himself together. Yes, you are strange,
To see in such an injured architecture
Room for new love to live in. Are you laughing? 185
No? Well, you are not crying, as you should be.
Tears, even if they told only gratitude
For your escape, and had no other story,
Were surely more becoming than a smile
For my unwomanly straightforwardness 190
In seeing for you, through my close gate of years
Your forty ways to freedom. Why do you smile?
And while I’m trembling at my faith in you
In giving you to read this book of danger
That only one man living might have written — 195
These letters, which have been a part of me
So long that you may read them all again
As often as you look into my face,
And hear them when I speak to you, and feel them
Whenever you have to touch me with your hand, — 200
Why are you so unwilling to be spared?
Why do you still believe in me? But no,
I’ll find another way to ask you that.
I wonder if there is another way
That says it better, and means anything. 205
There is no other way that could be worse?
I was not asking you; it was myself
Alone that I was asking. Why do I dip
For lies, when there is nothing in my well
But shining truth, you say? How do you know? 210
Truth has a lonely life down where she lives;
And many a time, when she comes up to breathe,
She sinks before we seize her, and makes ripples.
Possibly you may know no more of me
Than a few ripples; and they may soon be gone, 215
Leaving you then with all my shining truth
Drowned in a shining water; and when you look
You may not see me there, but something else
That never was a woman — being yourself.
You say to me my truth is past all drowning, 220
And safe with you for ever? You know all that?
How do you know all that, and who has told you?
You know so much that I’m an atom frightened
Because you know so little. And what is this?
You know the luxury there is in haunting 225
The blasted thoroughfares of disillusion —
If that’s your name for them — with only ghosts
For company? You know that when a woman
Is blessed, or cursed, with a divine impatience
(Another name of yours for a bad temper) 230
She must have one at hand on whom to wreak it
(That’s what you mean, whatever the turn you give it),
Sure of a kindred sympathy, and thereby
Effect a mutual calm? You
know that wisdom,
Given in vain to make a food for those 235
Who are without it, will be seen at last,
And even at last only by those who gave it,
As one or more of the forgotten crumbs
That others leave? You know that men’s applause
And women’s envy savor so much of dust 240
That I go hungry, having at home no fare
But the same changeless bread that I may swallow
Only with tears and prayers? Who told you that?
You know that if I read, and read alone,
Too many books that no men yet have written, 245
I may go blind, or worse? You know yourself,
Of all insistent and insidious creatures,
To be the one to save me, and to guard
For me their flaming language? And you know
That if I give much headway to the whim 250
That’s in me never to be quite sure that even
Through all those years of storm and fire I waited
For this one rainy day, I may go on,
And on, and on alone, through smoke and ashes,
To a cold end? You know so dismal much 255
As that about me?… Well, I believe you do.
Nimmo
SINCE you remember Nimmo, and arrive
At such a false and florid and far drawn
Confusion of odd nonsense, I connive
No longer, though I may have led you on.
So much is told and heard and told again, 5
So many with his legend are engrossed,
That I, more sorry now than I was then,
May live on to be sorry for his ghost.
You knew him, and you must have known his eyes, —
How deep they were, and what a velvet light 10
Came out of them when anger or surprise,
Or laughter, or Francesca, made them bright.
No, you will not forget such eyes, I think, —
And you say nothing of them. Very well.
I wonder if all history’s worth a wink, 15
Sometimes, or if my tale be one to tell.
For they began to lose their velvet light;
Their fire grew dead without and small within;
And many of you deplored the needless fight
That somewhere in the dark there must have been. 20
All fights are needless, when they’re not our own,
But Nimmo and Francesca never fought.
Remember that; and when you are alone,
Remember me — and think what I have thought.
Now, mind you, I say nothing of what was, 25
Or never was, or could or could not be:
Bring not suspicion’s candle to the glass
That mirrors a friend’s face to memory.
Of what you see, see all, — but see no more;
For what I show you here will not be there. 30
The devil has had his way with paint before,
And he’s an artist, — and you needn’t stare.
There was a painter and he painted well:
He’d paint you Daniel in the lion’s den,
Beelzebub, Elaine, or William Tell. 35
I’m coming back to Nimmo’s eyes again.
The painter put the devil in those eyes,
Unless the devil did, and there he stayed;
And then the lady fled from paradise,
And there’s your fact. The lady was afraid. 40
She must have been afraid, or may have been,
Of evil in their velvet all the while;
But sure as I’m a sinner with a skin,
I’ll trust the man as long as he can smile.
I trust him who can smile and then may live 45
In my heart’s house, where Nimmo is today.
God knows if I have more than men forgive
To tell him; but I played, and I shall pay.
I knew him then, and if I know him yet,
I know in him, defeated and estranged, 50
The calm of men forbidden to forget
The calm of women who have loved and changed.
But there are ways that are beyond our ways,
Or he would not be calm and she be mute,
As one by one their lost and empty days 55
Pass without even the warmth of a dispute.
God help us all when women think they see;
God save us when they do. I’m fair; but though
I know him only as he looks to me,
I know him, — and I tell Francesca so. 60
And what of Nimmo? Little would you ask
Of him, could you but see him as I can,
At his bewildered and unfruitful task
Of being what he was born to be — a man.
Better forget that I said anything 65
Of what your tortured memory may disclose;
I know him, and your worst remembering
Would count as much as nothing, I suppose.
Meanwhile, I trust him; and I know his way
Of trusting me, and always in his youth. 70
I’m painting here a better man, you say,
Than I, the painter; and you say the truth.
Peace on Earth
HE took a frayed hat from his head,
And “Peace on Earth” was what he said.
“A morsel out of what you’re worth,
And there we have it: Peace on Earth.
Not much, although a little more 5
Than what there was on earth before
I’m as you see, I’m Ichabod, —
But never mind the ways I’ve trod;
I’m sober now, so help me God.”
I could not pass the fellow by. 10
“Do you believe in God?” said I;
“And is there to be Peace on Earth?”
“Tonight we celebrate the birth,”
He said, “of One who died for men;
The Son of God, we say. What then? 15
Your God, or mine? I’d make you laugh
Were I to tell you even half
That I have learned of mine today
Where yours would hardly seem to stay.
Could He but follow in and out 20
Some anthropoids I know about,
The god to whom you may have prayed
Might see a world He never made.”
“Your words are flowing full,” said I;
“But yet they give me no reply; 25
Your fountain might as well be dry.”
“A wiser One than you, my friend,
Would wait and hear me to the end;
And for his eyes a light would shine
Through this unpleasant shell of mine 30
That in your fancy makes of me
A Christmas curiosity.
All right, I might be worse than that;
And you might now be lying flat;
I might have done it from behind, 35
And taken what there was to find.
Don’t worry, for I’m not that kind.
‘Do I believe in God?’ Is that
The price tonight of a new hat?
Has he commanded that his name 40
Be written everywhere the same?
Have all who live in every place
Identified his hidden face?
Who knows but he may like as well
My story as one you may tell? 45
And if he show me there be Peace
On Earth, as there be fields and trees
Outside a jail-yard, am I wrong
If now I sing him a new song?
Your world is in yourself, my friend, 50
For your endurance to the end;
And all the Peace there is on Earth
Is faith in what your world is worth,
And saying, without any lies,
Your world could not be otherwise.” 55
“One might say that and then be shot,”
I told him; and he said: “Why not?”
I ceased, and gave him rather more
Than he was counting of my store.
“And since I have it, thanks to you, 60
Don’t ask me what I mean to do,”
Said he. “Believe that even I
Would rather tell the truth than lie —
On Christmas Eve. No matter why.”
His unshaved, educated face, 65
His inextinguishable grace.
And his hard smile, are with me still,
Deplore the vision as I will;
For whatsoever he be at,
So droll a derelict as that 70
Should have at least another hat.
Late Summer
(ALCAICS)
CONFUSED, he found her lavishing feminine
Gold upon clay, and found her inscrutable;
And yet she smiled. Why, then, should horrors
Be as they were, without end, her playthings?
And why were dead years hungrily telling her 5
Lies of the dead, who told them again to her?
If now she knew, there might be kindness
Clamoring yet where a faith lay stifled.
A little faith in him, and the ruinous
Past would be for time to annihilate, 10
And wash out, like a tide that washes
Out of the sand what a child has drawn there.
God, what a shining handful of happiness,
Made out of days and out of eternities,
Were now the pulsing end of patience — 15
Could he but have what a ghost had stolen!
What was a man before him, or ten of them,
While he was here alive who could answer them,
And in their teeth fling confirmations
Harder than agates against an egg-shell? 20
But now the man was dead, and would come again
Never, though she might honor ineffably
The flimsy wraith of him she conjured
Out of a dream with his wand of absence.
And if the truth were now but a mummery, 25
Meriting pride’s implacable irony,
So much the worse for pride. Moreover,
Save her or fail, there was conscience always.
Meanwhile, a few misgivings of innocence,
Imploring to be sheltered and credited, 30