Music poems
/ page 252 of 253 /
Three Quatrains
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
As long as Fame's imperious music rings
Will poets mock it with crowned words august;
And haggard men will clamber to be kings
As long as Glory weighs itself in dust.
Atherton's Gambit
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Master played the bishops pawn,
For jest, while Atherton looked on;
The master played this way and that,
And Atherton, amazed thereat,
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?
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.
On the Way
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
But why forget them? Theyre the same that winked
Upon the world when Alcibiades
Cut off his dogs tail to induce distinction.
There are dogs yet, and Alcibiades
Is not forgotten.
The Dead Village
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things,
No life, no love, no children, and no men;
And over the forgotten place there clings
The strange and unrememberable light
That is in dreams. The music failed, and then
God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.
The Man Against the Sky
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
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,
Lancelot
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Gawaine, aware again of Lancelot
In the Kings garden, coughed and followed him;
Whereat he turned and stood with folded arms
And weary-waiting eyes, cold and half-closed
Captain Craig
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
II doubt if ten men in all Tilbury Town
Had ever shaken hands with Captain Craig,
Or called him by his name, or looked at him
So curiously, or so concernedly,
London Bridge
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singingand what of it?
Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that?
If I were not their father and if you were not their mother,
We might believe they made a noise
. What are youdriving at!
Old King Cole
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
In Tilbury Town did Old King Cole
A wise old age anticipate,
Desiring, with his pipe and bowl,
No Khans extravagant estate.
An Island
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Take it away, and swallow it yourself.
Ha! Look you, theres a rat.
Last night there were a dozen on that shelf,
And two of them were living in my hat.
Credo
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all--above, beyond it all--
I know the far sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the light.
The Dark House
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Where a faint light shines alone,
Dwells a Demon I have known.
Most of you had better say
"The Dark House," and go your way.
Do not wonder if I stay.
Octaves
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;
We shrink too sadly from the larger self
Which for its own completeness agitates
And undetermines us; we do not feel --
The World
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Some are the brothers of all humankind,
And own them, whatsoever their estate;
And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind
With enmity for man's unguarded fate.
The Crane & The Fox, a Fable
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
She came - wide stood the unfolded door
And roses deck'd the sanded floor -
- There hyacinths in festoons hung
- Here lillies their rich fragrance flung -
Epithalamium: A Marriage Poem
© Major Henry Livingston, Jr.
'Twas summer, when softly the breezes were blowing,
And Hudson majestic so sweetly was flowing,
The groves rang with music & accents of pleasure
And nature in rapture beat time to the measure,
Feeling Fucked Up
© Etheridge Knight
Lord she's gone done left me done packed / up and split
and I with no way to make her
come back and everywhere the world is bare
bright bone white crystal sand glistens
The Lonely God
© James Brunton Stephens
So Eden was deserted, and at eve
Into the quiet place God came to grieve.
His face was sad, His hands hung slackly down
Along his robe; too sorrowful to frown
