Edwin Arlington Robinson

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,

Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,
Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,
Stung by the mob that came to see the show,
The Master toiled along to Calvary;

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, As they had looked at ashes; but a few—Say five or six of us—had found somehow The spark...

She fears him, and will always ask What fated her to choose him;
She meets in his engaging mask All reason to refuse him
But what she meets and what she fears Are less than are the downward years,
Drawn slowly to the foamless weirs ...

At first I thought there was a
Persuasion in his face; but the free
That filled it when he stopped and cried, "Hollo
"Shone joyously, and so I let it shine

I heard one who said: "Verily,
What word have I for children here
Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear

(To Mrs
Edward
Dowell)No sound of any storm that shakes Old island walls with older seas Comes here where now September makes An island in a sea of trees
Between the sunlight and the shadeA man may learn till he forgets The roaring ...