Edwin Arlington Robinson gives us a harsh portrait of Aaron Stark, a shriveled, miserly man whose face and speech are as pinched as his soul. His eyes gleam like little coins in the dark; his words come out as guarded snarls. He seems entirely loveless, shambling through town year after year with a kind of grim satisfaction in his hard reputation. The speaker’s tone is cool and unflinching, building a mood that is bleak, grotesque, and faintly claustrophobic. Then the final couplet turns sharper. When Aaron overhears other people speaking of him with pity, touched even by tears, he laughs—only then. That laughter is not warm or redemptive. It suggests that pity feels foreign to him, perhaps ridiculous or insulting, and it leaves an unsettling afterimage of a man so isolated that even compassion becomes another thing to sneer at.
Aaron Stark — Summary
Withal a meagre man was Aaron Stark, -- Cursed and unkempt, shrewd, shrivelled, and morose. A miser was he, with a miser's nose, And eyes like little dollars in the dark. His thin, pinched mouth was nothing but a mark; And when he spoke there came like sullen blows Through scattered fangs a few snarled words and close, As if a cur were chary of its bark. Glad for the murmur of his hard renown, Year after year he shambled through the town, -- A loveless exile moving with a staff; And oftentimes there crept into his ears A sound of alien pity, touched with tears, -- And then (and only then) did Aaron laugh.