Edwin Arlington Robinson

“Life is the game that must be played”

“Alone, he saw the slanting waves roll in, Each to its impotent annihilation In a long wash of foam, until the sound Become for him a warning and a torture, Like a malign reproof reiterating In vain its cold and only sound of doom.”

“The world is not a prison house, but a kind of spiritual kindergarten where millions of of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”

“She fears him, and will always askWhat fated her to choose him;She meets in his engaging maskAll reasons to refuse him;But what she meets and what she fearsAre less than are the downward yearsDrawn slowly to the foamless weirsOf age, were she to lose him.”

“GO to the western gate, Luke Havergal,— There where the vines cling crimson on the wall,— And in the twilight wait for what will come. The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some,— Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall; But go, and if you trust her she will call. Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal— Luke Havergal. No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies To rift the fiery night that ’s in your eyes; But there, where western glooms are gathering, The dark will end the dark, if anything: God slays Himself with every leaf that flies, And hell is more than half of paradise. No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies— In eastern skies. Out of a grave I come to tell you this,— Out of grave I come to quench the kiss That flames upon your forehead with a glow That blinds you to the way that you must go. Yes, there is yet one way to where she is,— Bitter, but one that faith can never miss. Out of a grave I come to tell you this— To tell you this. There is the western gate, Luke Havergal, There are the crimson leaves upon the wall. Go,—for the winds are tearing them away,— Nor think to riddle the dead words they say, Nor any more to feel them as they fall; But go! and if you trust her she will call. There is the western gate, Luke Havergal— Luke Havergal.”

“Dark hills at evening in the west,Where sunset hovers like a soundOf golden horns that sang to restOld bones of warriors underground,Far now from all the bannered waysWhere flash the legions of the sun,You fade--as if the last of daysWere fading, and all wars were done.”

“To some will come a time when change itself is beauty, if not heaven.”

“And there was no Camelot now -- now that no Queen was there, all white and gold, under an oaktree with another sunlight sifting itself in silence on her glory through the dark leaves above her where she sat, smiling at what she feared, and fearing least what most there was to fear.”

“And thus we all are nighingThe truth we fear to know:Death will end our cryingFor friends that come and go.”

“Whenever Richard Cory went down town,we people on the pavement looked at him:He was a gentleman from sole to crown,clean favored, and imperially slim.And he was always quietly arrayed,and he was always human when he talked;but still he fluttered pulses when he said,"Good morning," and he glittered when he walked.And he was rich - yes, richer than a king -And admirably schooled in every grace:In fine, we thought that he was everythingto make us wish that we were in his place.So on we worked, and waited for the light,and went without the meat, and cursed the bread;And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, went home and put a bullet through his head.”