Faith poems

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The Book of Annandale

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

IPartly to think, more to be left alone,
George Annandale said something to his friends
A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough
To suit their funeral gazeand went upstairs;

Sainte-Nitouche

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Though not for common praise of him,
Nor yet for pride or charity,
Still would I make to Vanderberg
One tribute for his memory:

No, I have not your backward faith to shrink
Lone-faring from the doorway of Gods home
To find Him in the names of buried men;
Nor your ingenious recreance to think
We cherish, in the life that is to come,
The scattered features of dead friends again.

Rembrandt to Rembrandt

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

(AMSTERDAM, 1645)
And there you are again, now as you are.
Observe yourself as you discern yourself
In your discredited ascendency;

Avon's Harvest

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Mightnt it be as well, my friend, I said,
For you to contemplate the uncompleted
With not such an infernal certainty?

Uncle Ananias

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

His words were magic and his heart was true,
And everywhere he wandered he was blessed.
Out of all ancient men my childhood knew
I choose him and I mark him for the best.
Of all authoritative liars, too,
I crown him loveliest.

The Klondike

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

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,
Five left o twelve men to find the golden river.

Isaac and Archibald

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Isaac and Archibald were two old men.
I knew them, and I may have laughed at them
A little; but I must have honored them
For they were old, and they were good to me.

The Poor Relation

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

No longer torn by what she knows
And sees within the eyes of others,
Her doubts are when the daylight goes,
Her fears are for the few she bothers.

Partnership

Yes, you have it; I can see.
Beautiful? Dear, look at me!
Look and let my shame confess
Triumph after weariness.
Beautiful? Ah, yes.

As a World Would Have It

Shall I never make him look at me again?
I look at him, I look my life at him,
I tell him all I know the way to tell,
But there he stays the same.

The Man Against the Sky

Between me and the sunset, like a dome
Against the glory of a world on fire,
Now burned a sudden hill,
Bleak, round, and high, by flame-lit height made higher,

Calvary

But after nineteen hundred years the shame
Still clings, and we have not made good the loss
That outraged faith has entered in his name.
Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong!
Tell me, O Lord -- tell me, O Lord, how long
Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!