Work poems

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Agoraphobia

© John Burnside

My whole world is all you refuse:
a black light, angelic and cold
on the path to the orchard,
fox-runs and clouded lanes and the glitter of webbing,

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.

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.

The Three Taverns

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

When the brethren heard of us, they came to meet us as far as Appii Forum, and The Three Taverns.(Acts xxviii, 15)
Herodion, Apelles, Amplias,
And Andronicus? Is it you I see
At last? And is it you now that are gazing

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:

Llewellyn and the Tree

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Could he have made Priscilla share
The paradise that he had planned,
Llewellyn would have loved his wife
As well as any in the land.

Pasa Thalassa Thalassa

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

Gonefaded out of the story, the sea-faring friend I remember?
Gone for a decade, they say: never a word or a sign.
Gone with his hard red face that only his laughter could wrinkle,
Down where men go to be still, by the old way of the sea.

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?

Old Trails

© Edwin Arlington Robinson

I met him, as one meets a ghost or two,
Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.
King Solomon was right, theres nothing new,
Said he. Behold a ruin who meant well.

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.

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 Burning Book

OR THE CONTENTED METAPHYSICIAN
TO the lore of no manner of men
Would his vision have yielded
When he found what will never again

Lazarus

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.

Captain Craig

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,

John Brown

Though for your sake I would not have you now
So near to me tonight as now you are,
God knows how much a stranger to my heart
Was any cold word that I may have written;

Dear Friends

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;
And some unprofitable scorn resign,
To praise the very thing that he deplores;
So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,
The shame I win for singing is all mine,
The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.