Smile poems

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I tell you, Leffingwell was more than these;
And if he prove a rather sorry knight,
What quiverings in the distance of what light
May not have lured him with high promises,
And then gone down?He may have been deceived;
He may have lied,he did; and he believed.

Rahel to Varnhagen

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

NOTE.Rahel Robert and Varnhagen von Ense were married, after many protestations on her part, in 1814. The marriageso far as he was concerned at any rateappears 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

Tasker Norcross

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Ferguson,
Who talked himself at last out of the world
He censured, and is therefore silent now,
Agreed indifferently: My friends are dead
Or most of them.

Vickery's Mountain

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Blue in the west the mountain stands,
And through the long twilight
Vickery sits with folded hands,
And Vickerys eyes are bright.

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:

Nimmo

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

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.

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,

Shadrach O'Leary

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

But this was not the end. A year ago
I met himand to meet was to admire:
Forgotten were the ladies and the lyre,
And the small, ink-fed Eros of his dream.
By questioning I found a man to know
A failure spared, a Shadrach of the Gleam.

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?

The Sunken Crown

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Well, we are safe enough. Why linger, then?
The watery chance was his, not ours. Poor fool!
Poor truant, poor Narcissus out of school;
Poor jest of Ascalon; poor king of men.
The crown, if he be wearing it, may cool
His arrogance, and he may sleep again.

John Gorham

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Tell me what youre doing over here, John Gorham,
Sighing hard and seeming to be sorry when youre not;
Make me laugh or let me go now, for long faces in the moonlight
Are a sign for me to say again a word that you forgot.

The Revealer

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

(ROOSEVELT)He turned aside to see the carcase of the lion: and behold, there was a swarm of bees and honey in the carcase of the lion And the men of the city said unto him, What is sweeter than honey? and what is stronger than a lion?Judges, 14.
The palms of Mammon have disowned
The gift of our complacency;
The bells of ages have intoned

The Master

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

A flying word from here and there
Had sown the name at which we sneered,
To be reviled and then revered:
A presence to be loved and feared--

Isaac and Archibald

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.

Modernities

With infinite unseen enemies in the way
We have encountered the intangible,
To vanquish where our fathers, who fought well,
Scarce had assumed endurance for a day;
Yet we shall have our darkness, even as they,
And there shall be another tale to tell.

Ben Trovato

Though blind, with but a wandering hour to live,
He felt the other woman in the fur
That now the wife had on. Could she forgive
All that? Apparently. Her rings were gone,
Of course; and when he found that she had none,
He smiledas he had never smiled at her.

On the Way

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 Poor Relation

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.

Doctor of Billiards

You click away the kingdom that is yours,
And you click off your crown for cap and bells;
You smile, who are still master of the feast,
And for your smile we credit you the least;
But when your false, unhallowed laugh occurs,
We seem to think there may be something else.