Poetry Codex

American

Edwin Arlington Robinson

1869–1935

Edwin Arlington Robinson was born on 22 December 1869 at Head Tide, Maine, and grew up in the nearby town of Gardiner, which he later transformed into the 'Tilbury Town' of his verse. He attended Harvard as a special student from 1891 to 1893, then returned to Maine and later settled in New York, where he lived for years in poverty and worked briefly in the Custom House.

His early books, The Torrent and the Night Before (1896) and The Children of the Night (1897), are filled with compact character studies and sonnets, ballades and villanelles in a plain, ironic idiom. The Man Against the Sky (1916) established his reputation, and he went on to win three Pulitzer Prizes for poetry. He died in New York on 6 April 1935. The texts below come from the Project Gutenberg editions of The Children of the Night and The Man Against the Sky.

Major Works (6)

  1. Captain Craig — Narrative poem, 1902
  2. Cavender's House — Narrative poem, 1929
  3. The Glory of the Nightingales — Narrative poem, 1930
  4. Lancelot — Narrative poem, 1920
  5. Merlin — Narrative poem, 1917
  6. Tristram — Narrative poem, 1927

Poems (177)

  1. The Children of the Night
  2. Three Quatrains
  3. The World
  4. An Old Story
  5. Ballade of a Ship
  6. Ballade by the Fire
  7. Ballade of Broken Flutes
  8. Ballade of Dead Friends
  9. Her Eyes
  10. Two Men
  11. Villanelle of Change
  12. John Evereldown
  13. Luke Havergal
  14. The House on the Hill
  15. Richard Cory
  16. Two Octaves
  17. Calvary
  18. Dear Friends
  19. The Story of the Ashes and the Flame
  20. For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold
  21. Amaryllis
  22. Kosmos
  23. Zola
  24. The Pity of the Leaves
  25. Aaron Stark
  26. The Garden
  27. Cliff Klingenhagen
  28. Charles Carville's Eyes
  29. The Dead Village
  30. Boston
  31. Two Sonnets
  32. The Clerks
  33. Fleming Helphenstine
  34. For a Book by Thomas Hardy
  35. Thomas Hood
  36. The Miracle
  37. Horace to Leuconoe
  38. Reuben Bright
  39. The Altar
  40. The Tavern
  41. Sonnet
  42. George Crabbe
  43. Credo
  44. On the Night of a Friend's Wedding
  45. Sonnet
  46. Verlaine
  47. Sonnet
  48. Supremacy
  49. The Night Before
  50. Walt Whitman
  51. The Chorus of Old Men in "Aegeus"
  52. The Wilderness
  53. Octaves
  54. Two Quatrains
  55. Romance
  56. The Torrent
  57. L'Envoi
  58. Flammonde
  59. The Gift of God
  60. The Clinging Vine
  61. Cassandra
  62. John Gorham
  63. Stafford's Cabin
  64. Hillcrest
  65. Old King Cole
  66. Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford
  67. Eros Turannos
  68. Old Trails
  69. The Unforgiven
  70. Theophilus
  71. Veteran Sirens
  72. Siege Perilous
  73. Another Dark Lady
  74. The Voice of Age
  75. The Dark House
  76. The Poor Relation
  77. The Burning Book
  78. Fragment
  79. Lisette and Eileen
  80. Llewellyn and the Tree
  81. Bewick Finzer
  82. Bokardo
  83. The Man against the Sky
  84. The Valley of the Shadow
  85. The Wandering Jew
  86. Neighbors
  87. The Mill
  88. The Dark Hills
  89. The Three Taverns
  90. Demos I
  91. Demos II
  92. The Flying Dutchman
  93. Tact
  94. On the Way
  95. John Brown
  96. The False Gods
  97. Archibald's Example
  98. London Bridge
  99. Tasker Norcross
  100. A Song at Shannon's
  101. Souvenir
  102. Discovery
  103. Firelight
  104. The New Tenants
  105. Inferential
  106. The Rat
  107. Rahel to Varnhagen
  108. Nimmo
  109. Peace on Earth
  110. Late Summer
  111. An Evangelist's Wife
  112. The Old King's New Jester
  113. Lazarus
  114. Miniver Cheevy
  115. The Master
  116. Vain Gratuities
  117. Calverly's
  118. The Klondike
  119. Isaac and Archibald
  120. The Return of Morgan and Fingal
  121. Aunt Imogen
  122. The Growth of "Lorraine"
  123. The Sage
  124. Erasmus
  125. The Woman and the Wife
  126. The Book of Annandale
  127. Sainte-Nitouche
  128. As a World Would Have It
  129. The Corridor
  130. Cortège
  131. The Wife of Palissy
  132. Twilight Song
  133. Variations of Greek Themes
  134. The Field of Glory
  135. The Town Down the River
  136. An Island
  137. Leffingwell
  138. Clavering
  139. Lingard and the Stars
  140. Pasa Thalassa Thalassa
  141. Momus
  142. Uncle Ananias
  143. The Whip
  144. The White Lights
  145. Exit
  146. Leonora
  147. The Wise Brothers
  148. But for the Grace of God
  149. For Arvia
  150. The Sunken Crown
  151. Doctor of Billiards
  152. Shadrach O'Leary
  153. How Annandale Went Out
  154. Alma Mater
  155. The Pilot
  156. Vickery's Mountain
  157. Bon Voyage
  158. The Companion
  159. Atherton's Gambit
  160. For a Dead Lady
  161. Two Gardens in Linndale
  162. The Revealer
  163. Avon's Harvest
  164. Mr. Flood's Party
  165. Ben Trovato
  166. The Tree in Pamela's Garden
  167. Job the Rejected
  168. Lost Anchors
  169. Recalled
  170. Modernities
  171. Afterthoughts
  172. Caput Mortuum
  173. Monadnock Through the Trees
  174. The Long Race
  175. Many Are Called
  176. Rembrandt to Rembrandt
  177. The Man Who Died Twice

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