Edwin Arlington Robinson

Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His narrative and dramatic poems, often set in the fictional Tilbury Town, examine isolation, failure, and the inner lives of ordinary individuals. Biography ↓More ↓

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For Arvia

You Eyes, you large and all-inquiring Eyes, That look so dubiously into me, And are not satisfied with what you see, Tell me the worst and let us have no lies: Tell me the secret of your scrutinies, And of myself. Am I a Mystery? Am I a Boojum--or just Company? What do you say? What do you think, You Eyes? You say not; but you think, beyond a doubt; And you have the whole world to think about, With very little time for little things. So let it be; and let it all be fair-- For you, and for the rest who cannot share Your gold of unrevealed awakenings.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

But for the Grace of God

There is a question that I ask, And ask again: What hunger was half-hidden by the mask That he wore then? There was a word for me to say That I said not; And in the past there was another day That I forgot: A dreary, cold, unwholesome day, Racked overhead,-- As if the world were turning the wrong way, And the sun dead: A day that comes back well enough Now he is gone. What then? Has memory no other stuff To seize upon?

Biography

Edwin Arlington Robinson was an American poet born in 1869 and died in 1935. He is known for narrative poems and character studies, frequently set in the fictional Tilbury Town, a small New England community. His poetry often focuses on themes of isolation, unfulfilled lives, and the psychological struggles of individuals. Robinson employed traditional verse forms while introducing modern psychological realism and irony. He published several collections, including 'The Children of the Night' (1897) and 'The Man Against the Sky' (1916). His long narrative poem 'Tristram' (1927) received the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, as did his Collected Poems (1921) and 'The Man Who Died Twice' (1924). Robinson is regarded as a significant figure in the transition from nineteenth-century to twentieth-century American poetry. His work influenced later poets such as Robert Frost and W. H. Auden.

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