Robinson’s “Life” speaks with a voice of weary resignation. The epigraph sets the lesson: the world is a school where we learn only to suffer. From there, the speaker dismantles every conventional comfort. Love, he says, is a fickle child who wounds and smiles in equal measure; its treasures are anxious hopes and transient pleasures. Friendship is a shadowy flame, rarely found. Beauty is a flower that blooms at morning but withers by twilight. Youth itself is a “smiling sorrow”—erratic, capricious, and soon chased away by age. That age arrives like a winter blight, stripping life of its foliage and leaving only “keen regrets and cureless pains.” The poem’s rhythm marches steadily toward its only respite: death appears not as a terror, but as a “welcome friend” who finally ends the scene of sorrow. The mood is unrelentingly bleak, yet the calm, measured lines give the despair a strange, almost soothing inevitability.
Life — Summary
"What is this world?thy school, O misery! "Our only lesson is to learn to suffer."
YOUNG.
LOVE, thou sportive fickle boy, Source of anguish, child of joy, Ever woundingever smiling, Soothing still, and still beguiling; What are all thy boasted treasures, Tender sorrows, transient pleasures? Anxious hopes, and jealous fears, LAUGHING HOURS, and MOURNING YEARS.
What is FRIENDSHIP'S soothing name? But a shad'wy, vap'rish flame; Fancy's balm for ev'ry wound, Ever sought, but rarely found; What is BEAUTY ? but a flow'r, Blooming, fading in an hour; Deck'd with brightest tints at morn, At twilight with'ring on a thorn; Like the gentle Rose of spring, Chill'd by ev'ry zephyr's wing, Ah! how soon its colour flies, Blushes, trembles, falls, and dies.
What is YOUTH ? a smiling sorrow, Blithe to day, and sad to-morrow; Never fix'd, for ever ranging, Laughing, weeping, doating, changing; Wild, capricious, giddy, vain, Cloy'd with pleasure, nurs'd with pain; AGE steals on with wint'ry face, Ev'ry rapt'rous Hope to chase; Like a wither'd, sapless tree, Bow'd to chilling Fate's decree; Strip'd of all its foliage gay, Drooping at the close of day; What of tedious Life remains? Keen regrets and cureless pains; Till DEATH appears, a welcome friend, To bid the scene of sorrow end.