Smile poems
/ page 368 of 369 /
The Burning Book
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN
TO the lore of no manner of men
Would his vision have yielded
When he found what will never again
The Valley of the Shadow
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,
There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;
There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes,
There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet.
Partnership
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Yes, you have it; I can see.
Beautiful?
Dear, look at me!
Look and let my shame confess
Triumph after weariness.
Beautiful? Ah, yes.
Lazarus
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
The Master loved you as he loved us all,
Martha; and you are saying only things
That children say when they have had no sleep.
Try somehow now to rest a little while;
You know that I am here, and that our friends
Are coming if I call.
Merlin
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Gawaine, Gawaine, what look ye for to see,
So far beyond the faint edge of the world?
Dye look to see the lady Vivian,
Pursued by divers ominous vile demons
The Gift of God
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Blessed with a joy that only she
Of all alive shall ever know,
She wears a proud humility
For what it was that willed it so -
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
Neighbors
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
As often as we thought of her,
We thought of a gray life
That made a quaint economist
Of a wolf-haunted wife;
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,
The Unforgiven
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
When he, who is the unforgiven,
Beheld her first, he found her fair:
No promise ever dreamt in heaven
Could have lured him anywhere
Aunt Imogen
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Aunt Imogen was coming, and therefore
The childrenJane, Sylvester, and Young George
Were eyes and ears; for there was only one
Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world,
Late Summer
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
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?
Peace on Earth
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
I could not pass the fellow by.
Do you believe in God? said I;
And is there to be Peace on Earth?
Cliff Klingenhagen
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
And when I asked him what the deuce he meant
By doing that, he only looked at me
And smiled, and said it was a way of his.
And though I know the fellow, I have spent
Long time a-wondering when I shall be
As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.
Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
You are a friend then, as I make it out,
Of our man Shakespeare, who alone of us
Will put an ass's head in Fairyland
As he would add a shilling to more shillings,
Tact
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Observant of the way she told
So much of what was true,
No vanity could long withhold
Regard that was her due:
The Tree In Pamela's Garden
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Pamela was too gentle to deceive
Her roses. "Let the men stay where they are,"
She said, "and if Apollo's avatar
Be one of them, I shall not have to grieve."
Why He Was There
© Edwin Arlington Robinson
Calm as he was of old when we were young,
He sat there gazing at the pallid flame
Before him. "And how far will this go on?"
I thought. He felt the failure of my tongue,
And smiled: "I was not here until you came;
And I shall not be here when you are gone."
The Deserted Village
© Oliver Goldsmith
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates, and men decay:
Princes and lords may flourish, or may fade;
A breath can make them, as a breath has made;
But a bold peasantry, their country's pride,
When once destroyed can never be supplied.
