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The Children of the Night

by Edwin Arlington Robinson 







A Book of Poems 








To the Memory of my Father and Mother













Contents






The Children of the Night

Three Quatrains

The World

An Old Story

Ballade of a Ship

Ballade by the Fire

Ballade of Broken Flutes

Ballade of Dead Friends

Her Eyes

Two Men

Villanelle of Change

John Evereldown

Luke Havergal

The House on the Hill

Richard Cory

Two Octaves

Calvary

Dear Friends

The Story of the Ashes and the Flame

For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold

Amaryllis

Kosmos

Zola

The Pity of the Leaves

Aaron Stark

The Garden

Cliff Klingenhagen

Charles Carville's Eyes

The Dead Village

Boston

Two Sonnets

The Clerks

Fleming Helphenstine

For a Book by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hood

The Miracle

Horace to Leuconoe

Reuben Bright

The Altar

The Tavern

Sonnet

George Crabbe

Credo

On the Night of a Friend's Wedding

Sonnet

Verlaine

Sonnet

Supremacy

The Night Before

Walt Whitman

The Chorus of Old Men in 〃Aegeus〃

The Wilderness

Octaves

Two Quatrains

Romance

The Torrent

L'Envoi



















The Children of the Night







For those that never know the light;

 The darkness is a sullen thing;

And they; the Children of the Night;

 Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing。



But some are strong and some are weak; 

 And there's the story。  House and home

Are shut from countless hearts that seek

 World…refuge that will never come。



And if there be no other life;

 And if there be no other chance

To weigh their sorrow and their strife

 Than in the scales of circumstance;



'T were better; ere the sun go down

 Upon the first day we embark;

In life's imbittered sea to drown;

 Than sail forever in the dark。



But if there be a soul on earth

 So blinded with its own misuse

Of man's revealed; incessant worth;

 Or worn with anguish; that it views



No light but for a mortal eye;

 No rest but of a mortal sleep;

No God but in a prophet's lie;

 No faith for 〃honest doubt〃 to keep;



If there be nothing; good or bad;

 But chaos for a soul to trust; 

God counts it for a soul gone mad;

 And if God be God; He is just。



And if God be God; He is Love;

 And though the Dawn be still so dim;

It shows us we have played enough

 With creeds that make a fiend of Him。



There is one creed; and only one;

 That glorifies God's excellence;

So cherish; that His will be done;

 The common creed of common sense。



It is the crimson; not the gray;

 That charms the twilight of all time;

It is the promise of the day

 That makes the starry sky sublime;



It is the faith within the fear

 That holds us to the life we curse; 

So let us in ourselves revere

 The Self which is the Universe!



Let us; the Children of the Night;

 Put off the cloak that hides the scar!

Let us be Children of the Light;

 And tell the ages what we are!









Three Quatrains







  I





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。







  II





Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled;

 Nor shudder for the revels that are done:

The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled;

 The strings that Nero fingered are all gone。







  III





We cannot crown ourselves with everything;

 Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:

No matter what we are; or what we sing;

 Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel。









The World







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。



For some there is a music all day long

 Like flutes in Paradise; they are so glad;

And there is hell's eternal under…song

 Of curses and the cries of men gone mad。



Some say the Scheme with love stands luminous;

 Some say 't were better back to chaos hurled;

And so 't is what we are that makes for us

 The measure and the meaning of the world。









An Old Story







Strange that I did not know him then;

 That friend of mine!

I did not even show him then

 One friendly sign;



But cursed him for the ways he had

 To make me see

My envy of the praise he had

 For praising me。



I would have rid the earth of him

 Once; in my pride! 。 。 。

I never knew the worth of him

 Until he died。









Ballade of a Ship







Down by the flash of the restless water

 The dim White Ship like a white bird lay;

Laughing at life and the world they sought her;

 And out she swung to the silvering bay。

 Then off they flew on their roystering way;

And the keen moon fired the light foam flying

 Up from the flood where the faint stars play;

And the bones of the brave in the wave are lying。



'T was a king's fair son with a king's fair daughter;

 And full three hundred beside; they say; 

Revelling on for the lone; cold slaughter

 So soon to seize them and hide them for aye;

 But they danced and they drank and their souls grew gay;

Nor ever they knew of a ghoul's eye spying

 Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray

Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying。



Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her

 (This wild white bird) for the sea…fiend's prey:

The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her;

 And hurled her down where the dead men stay。

 A torturing silence of wan dismay 

Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying 

 Then down they sank to slumber and sway

Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying。



    ENVOY



Prince; do you sleep to the sound alway

 Of the mournful surge and the sea…birds' crying? 

Or does love still shudder and steel still slay;

 Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?









Ballade by the Fire







Slowly I smoke and hug my knee;

 The while a witless masquerade

Of things that only children see

 Floats in a mist of light and shade:

 They pass; a flimsy cavalcade;

And with a weak; remindful glow;

 The falling embers break and fade;

As one by one the phantoms go。



Then; with a melancholy glee

 To think where once my fancy strayed;

I muse on what the years may be

 Whose coming tales are all unsaid;

 Till tongs and shovel; snugly laid

Within their shadowed niches; grow

 By grim degrees to pick and spade;

As one by one the phantoms go。



But then; what though the mystic Three

 Around me ply their merry trade? 

And Charon soon may carry me

 Across the gloomy Stygian glade? 

 Be up; my soul! nor be afraid

Of what some unborn year may show;

 But mind your human debts are paid;

As one by one the phantoms go。



    ENVOY



Life is the game that must be played:

 This truth at least; good friend; we know;

So live and laugh; nor be dismayed

 As one by one the phantoms go。









Ballade of Broken Flutes



(To A。 T。 Schumann。)







In dreams I crossed a barren land;

 A land of ruin; far away;

Around me hung on every hand

 A deathful stillness of decay;

 And silent; as in bleak dismay

That song should thus forsaken be;

 On that forgotten ground there lay

The broken flutes of Arcady。



The forest that was all so grand

 When pipes and tabors had their sway

Stood leafless now; a ghostly band

 Of skeletons in cold array。

 A lonely surge of ancient spray

Told of an unforgetful sea;

 But iron blows had hushed for aye

The broken flutes of Arcady。



No more by summer breezes fanned;

 The place was desolate and gray;

But still my dream was to command

 New life into that shrunken clay。

 I tried it。  Yes; you scan to…day;

With uncommiserating glee;

 The songs of one who strove to play

The broken flutes of Arcady。



    ENVOY



So; Rock; I join the common fray;

 To fight where Mammon may decree;

And leave; to crumble as they may;

 The broken flutes of Arcady。









Ballade of Dead Friends







As we the withered ferns

 By the roadway lying;

Time; the jester; spurns

 All our prayers and prying 

 All our tears and sighing;

Sorrow; change; and woe 

 All our where…and…whying

For friends that come and go。



Life awakes and burns;

 Age and death defying;

Till at last it learns

 All but Love is dying;

 Love's the trade we're plying;

God has willed it so;

 Shrouds are what we're buying

For friends that come and go。



Man forever yearns

 For the thing that's flying。

Everywhere he turns;

 Men to dust are drying; 

 Dust that wanders; eying

(With eyes that hardly glow)

 New faces; dimly spying

For friends that come and go。


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