For a Dead Lady
No more with overflowing light Shall fill the eyes that now are faded,
Nor shall another's fringe with night Their woman-hidden world as they did.
No more shall quiver down the days The flowing wonder of her ways,
Whereof no language may requite The shifting and the many-shaded.
The grace, divine, definitive,
Clings only as a faint forestalling;
The laugh that love could not forgive Is hushed, and answers to no calling;
The forehead and the little ears Have gone where Saturn keeps the years;
The breast where roses could not live Has done with rising and with falling.
The beauty, shattered by the laws That have creation in their keeping,
No longer trembles at applause,
Or over children that are sleeping;
And we who delve in beauty's lore Know all that we have known before Of what inexorable cause Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Other author posts
Ballad 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 House on the Hill
They are all gone away, The House is shut and still, There is nothing more to say Through broken walls and gray The winds blow bleak and shrill: They are all gone away Nor is there one to-day To speak them good or ill: There is nothing m...
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
Credo
I cannot find my way: there is no star In all the shrouded heavens anywhere; And there is not a whisper in the air Of any living voice but one so far That I can hear it only as a bar Of lost, imperial music, played when fair And angel fingers...
