E.A. Robinson

[MikeK]

Is anybody else here a fan of E.A. Robinson? I just finished an anthology of his poems, and he's risen even higher in my estimation after reading him more thoroughly. He's certainly one of the greatest American poets, I think. I'm only starting this thread because I just looked down on the author's list to see if there was any previous discussion about him, and he's not included. Anyone out there want to discuss any Robinson? Just to possibly get things started, my five favorite poems of his (in no particular order) are:

Miniver Cheevy
Richard Cory
Mr. Flood's Party
The Pity of the Leaves
The Sheaves

[mono]

Hello, MikeK.
Unfortunately, I have not read as much E.A. Robinson as I would like, but have read some poetry anthologies with selections of his poetry. He does have a talent not worth overlooking, in my opinion, and he does not own as much fame as he could potentially have, but, I think, this may also keep some of his modest poetry untainted by multiple arguments of interpretations, excessive exposure, and the like.
I have read a few of the poems you listed, and I would like to add a few myself --

Souvenir

A vanished house that for an hour I knew
By some forgotten chance when I was young
Had once a glimmering window overhung
With honeysuckle wet with evening dew.
Along the path tall dusky dahlias grew,
And shadowy hydrangeas reached and swung
Ferociously; and over me, among
The moths and mysteries, a blurred bat flew.

Somewhere within there were dim presences
Of days that hovered and of years gone by.
I waited, and between their silences
There was an evanescent faded noise;
And though a child, I knew it was the voice
Of one whose occupation was to die.

As It Looked Then

In a sick shade of spruce, moss-webbed, rock-fed,
Where, long unfollowed by sagacious man,
A scrub that once had been a pathway ran
Blindly from nowhere and to nowhere led,
One might as well have been among the dead
As half way there alive; so I began
Like a malingering pioneer to plan
A vain return—with one last look ahead.

And it was then that like a spoken word
Where there was none to speak, insensibly
A flash of blue that might have been a bird
Grew soon to the calm wonder of the sea—
Calm as a quiet sky that looked to be
Arching a world where nothing had occurred.

[MikeK]

Ah yes. Two great sonnets. Robinson was one of the very best American sonnet-writers. And he was great in dealing with loneliness, sadness, death, memory, and grief ("patient grief" as Robert Frost termed the main theme in Robinson's poetry). Those two sonnets that you picked are perfect examples, and wonderful poems. I say that he was great in dealing with those themes because he dealt with them honestly and beautifully - and without ever drifting over into hopeless despair.

Sorry to all others who are less familiar with his works that I didn't post any of those that I mentioned:



"The Pity of the Leaves"

Vengeful across the cold November moors,
Loud with ancestral shame there came the bleak,
Sad wind that shrieked, and answered with a shriek,
Reverberant through lonely corridors.
The old man heard it; and he heard, perforce,
Words out of lips that were no more to speak—
Words of the past that shook the old man’s cheek
Like dead, remembered footsteps on old floors.

And then there were the leaves that plagued him so!
The brown, thin leaves that on the stones outside
Skipped with a freezing whisper. Now and then
They stopped, and stayed there—just to let him know
How dead they were; but if the old man cried,
They fluttered off like withered souls of men.



"The Sheaves"

Where long the shadows of the wind had rolled,
Green wheat was yielding to the change assigned;
And as by some vast magic undivined
The world was turning slowly into gold.
Like nothing that was ever bought or sold
It waited there, the body and the mind;
And with a mighty meaning of a kind
That tells the more the more it is not told.

So in a land where all days are not fair,
Fair days went on till on another day
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay -
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.



"Miniver Cheevy"
(Not any big deal, but the second and fourth lines of every stanza are supposed to be indented, but for some reason in copying the poem over here, it won't indent those lines)

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
And Priam’s neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediaeval grace
Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
And kept on drinking.





"Richard Cory"

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 everything
To 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.



"Mr. Flood's Party"

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood--
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang--

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below--
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

[mono]

Mr. Flood's Party

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird." He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: "Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will."

Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland's ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben's eyes were dim.

Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:

"Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!"
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
"Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.

"Only a very little, Mr. Flood--
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do."
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang--

"For auld lang syne." The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below--
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.

I had forgotten he wrote 'Mr. Flood's Party' - I love this poem!
I remember having to read it for a poetry class I took years ago, which first allured me to E.A. Robinson, though, as I said, I have not read as much as I would prefer.
One thing I noticed about him regards his descriptions - very unique and distinguished; in an odd sort of way, I sometimes considered him much like an earlier Carl Sandburg, though I know it sounds strange - they both had this pattern of using peculiar, but very unique, admirable, and understandable descriptions. Then again, I seem biased; in the same poetry class, I wrote an essay comparing the poetry of E.A. Robinson and Carl Sandburg.
Just out of curiosity, MikeK, do you have any recommendations of Robinson's poetry? I would love to, finally, read more.

[MikeK]

Mono, you can probably get a collection of just his sonnets. As I mentioned in a previous post, I think he might just be the best American sonnet-writer (sonneteer?). I found a book in my library that had all of his poetry...small-type and about 1500 pages long. Maybe you can find that book. That's the one I just read through and am going to look to buy now, because other than that, the only Robinson poetry that I currently own is in anthologies (sad to say). A few other poems of his that I really like that I'll mention:


"Eros Turannos"

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

Between a blurred sagacity
That once had power to sound him,
And Love, that will not let him be
The Judas that she found him,
Her pride assuages her almost,
As if it were alone the cost. --
He sees that he will not be lost,
And waits and looks around him.

A sense of ocean and old trees
Envelops and allures him;
Tradition, touching all he sees,
Beguiles and reassures him;
And all her doubts of what he says
Are dimmed of what she knows of days --
Till even prejudice delays
And fades, and she secures him.

The falling leaf inaugurates
The reign of her confusion;
The pounding wave reverberates
The dirge of her illusion;
And home, where passion lived and died,
Becomes a place where she can hide,
While all the town and harbor side
Vibrate with her seclusion.

We tell you, tapping on our brows,
The story as it should be, --
As if the story of a house
Were told, or ever could be;
We'll have no kindly veil between
Her visions and those we have seen, --
As if we guessed what hers have been,
Or what they are or would be.

Meanwhile we do no harm; for they
That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
Take what the god has given;
Though like waves breaking it may be,
Or like a changed familiar tree,
Or like a stairway to the sea
Where down the blind are driven.

(I absolutely love this poem, and I love the form he chose. He was a master with form, and with forming it to his purposes. I didn't mention it before, but that's much of what I like about "Miniver Cheevy". I believe, in "Miniver Cheevy" he used the form of Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci".)



"The Mill"

The miller's wife had waited long,
The tea was cold, the fire was dead;
And there might yet be nothing wrong
In how he went and what he said:
"There are no millers any more,"
Was all that she heard him say;
And he had lingered at the door
So long it seemed like yesterday.

Sick with a fear that had no form
She knew that she was there at last;
And in the mill there was a warm
And mealy fragrance of the past.
What else there was would only seem
To say again what he had meant;
And what was hanging from a beam
Would not have heeded where she went.

And if she thought it followed her,
She may have reasoned in the dark
That one way of the few there were
Would hide her and would leave no mark:
Black water, smooth above the weir
Like starry velvet in the night,
Though ruffled once, would soon appear
The same as ever to the sight.

(Love that line: "There are no millers anymore,"/ Was all that she had heard him say;...)



"Cortège"

Four o’clock this afternoon,
Fifteen hundred miles away:
So it goes, the crazy tune,
So it pounds and hums all day.

Four o’clock this afternoon,
Earth will hide them far away:
Best they go to go so soon,
Best for them the grave to-day.

Had she gone but half so soon,
Half the world had passed away.
Four o’clock this afternoon,
Best for them they go to-day.

Four o’clock this afternoon
Love will hide them deep, they say;
Love that made the grave so soon,
Fifteen hundred miles away.

Four o’clock this afternoon—
Ah, but they go slow to-day:
Slow to suit my crazy tune,
Past the need of all we say.

Best it came to come so soon,
But for them they go to-day:
Four o’clock this afternoon,
Fifteen hundred miles away.

(Haunting; the above poem)



"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 more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around that sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

(For those who enjoy Vilanelles)

[mono]

"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 more to say.

Why is it then we stray
Around that sunken sill?
They are all gone away,

And our poor fancy-play
For them is wasted skill:
There is nothing more to say.

There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

(For those who enjoy Vilanelles)

Wow, another poem by E.A. Robinson I remember reading! I can always respect a poet who can successfully write a vilanelle; I have tried many times, but few of them have succeeded to my likeness.
Thanks for the suggestion, MikeK; I will certainly look around to find some collections of Robinson.

[MikeK]

I agree. I love vilanelles, and yet they're nearly impossible to write well. I think that most of them fail. When done well, the echo can be moving, touching, or even haunting (I'm thinking of "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" with that last adjective). But when not done well they are...well, at best simply repetitive, and at worst laughable. "The House on the Hill" is one of my favorites.

As I went back to read Robinson again I found that he was not just great in one or two different forms, but he could be great using various forms, meters, and rhythms. And his rhymes are excellent.

[MikeK]

One thing I noticed about him regards his descriptions - very unique and distinguished; in an odd sort of way, I sometimes considered him much like an earlier Carl Sandburg, though I know it sounds strange - they both had this pattern of using peculiar, but very unique, admirable, and understandable descriptions. Then again, I seem biased; in the same poetry class, I wrote an essay comparing the poetry of E.A. Robinson and Carl Sandburg.

Mono, I'm not really familiar with Sandburg at all except for his poem "Grass", so I can't really compare (even though I'm from Chicago so I do know his 'Chicago' poem; "Hog Butcher for the World...").

I have been reading more on Robinson now (particularly Harold Bloom's collection of criticism on Robinson), and people seem to compare him a lot to Emerson. I'm also not very familiar with Emerson or Transcendentalism (Although I like his poem "Each and All", and I absolutely love "The Rhodora"), so again, I can't compare. But I would have to say that the more I read of Robinson, he reminds me a lot of Robert Frost, the other great American New England poet. The many poems that Frost wrote on loneliness, isolation, sadness and death are very Robinsonian. Incidentally, Frost and Robinson knew each other, liked each other, and enjoyed each other's poetry. Frost wrote an absolutely brilliant introduction to Robinson's "King Jasper", which was published posthumously. Anyway, I really have no point but just thought I'd mention that the more I read of Robinson it's his New England contemporary - Frost - that he reminds me of.

[mono]

Mono, I'm not really familiar with Sandburg at all except for his poem "Grass", so I can't really compare (even though I'm from Chicago so I do know his 'Chicago' poem; "Hog Butcher for the World...").

If you have the time to browse some of Carl Sandburg's poetry, this site has quite a bit of his poetry. I have only read 'bits and pieces' as well, only having a moderately-sized collection of his poetry, but find him amazing, nonetheless. I believe he won the Pulitzer Prize, once upon a time, too.

. . . and people seem to compare him a lot to Emerson. I'm also not very familiar with Emerson or Transcendentalism (Although I like his poem "Each and All", and I absolutely love "The Rhodora"), so again, I can't compare. But I would have to say that the more I read of Robinson, he reminds me a lot of Robert Frost, the other great American New England poet. The many poems that Frost wrote on loneliness, isolation, sadness and death are very Robinsonian. Incidentally, Frost and Robinson knew each other, liked each other, and enjoyed each other's poetry.

Hmmm, I had never thought of a comparison to Ralph Waldo Emerson, but I can certainly see the similarities; he remains one of my favorite poets (and essayists) of all time. Again, on the same site, you can find some of Emerson's poetry here.
Wow, I had no idea of a friendship between E.A. Robinson and and Robert Frost, but had always noticed similarities between their poetry, as well - very melancholic, nostalgic, and introspective (one of my favorite combinations ).
Thank you for the note; I always seem to learn more and more, and realize how much I need to look into more work by Robinson.

[Jd12]

Just wondering if anyone could give me some help on the meanings of the two poems, Fleming Helpenstine and Cliff Klingenhagen. Thanks