Читать бесплатно онлайн книгу автора  Children of the Night

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Project Gutenberg's The Children of the Night, by Edwin Arlington Robinson

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

Title: The Children of the Night

Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson

Release Date: July 1, 2008 [EBook #313]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT ***

Produced by A. Light, L. Bowser, and David Widger

THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

[Maine Poet — 1869-1935.]

1905 printing of the 1897 edition

Contents

The Children of the Night

Three Quatrains

The World

An Old Story

Ballade of a Ship

Ballade by the Fire

Ballade of Broken Flutes

Ballade of Dead Friends

Her Eyes

Two Men

Villanelle of Change

John Evereldown

Luke Havergal

The House on the Hill

Richard Cory

Two Octaves

Calvary

Dear Friends

The Story of the Ashes and the Flame

For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold

Amaryllis

Kosmos

Zola

The Pity of the Leaves

Aaron Stark

The Garden

Cliff Klingenhagen

Charles Carville's Eyes

The Dead Village

Boston

Two Sonnets

The Clerks

Fleming Helphenstine

For a Book by Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hood

The Miracle

Horace to Leuconoe

Reuben Bright

The Altar

The Tavern

Sonnet

George Crabbe

Credo

On the Night of a Friend's Wedding

Sonnet

Verlaine

Sonnet

Supremacy

The Night Before

Walt Whitman

The Chorus of Old Men in "Aegeus"

The Wilderness

Octaves

Two Quatrains

To the Memory of my Father and Mother

The Children of the Night

For those that never know the light,

The darkness is a sullen thing;

And they, the Children of the Night,

Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.

But some are strong and some are weak, —

And there's the story. House and home

Are shut from countless hearts that seek

World-refuge that will never come.

And if there be no other life,

And if there be no other chance

To weigh their sorrow and their strife

Than in the scales of circumstance,

'T were better, ere the sun go down

Upon the first day we embark,

In life's imbittered sea to drown,

Than sail forever in the dark.

But if there be a soul on earth

So blinded with its own misuse

Of man's revealed, incessant worth,

Or worn with anguish, that it views

No light but for a mortal eye,

No rest but of a mortal sleep,

No God but in a prophet's lie,

No faith for "honest doubt" to keep;

If there be nothing, good or bad,

But chaos for a soul to trust, —

God counts it for a soul gone mad,

And if God be God, He is just.

And if God be God, He is Love;

And though the Dawn be still so dim,

It shows us we have played enough

With creeds that make a fiend of Him.

There is one creed, and only one,

That glorifies God's excellence;

So cherish, that His will be done,

The common creed of common sense.

It is the crimson, not the gray,

That charms the twilight of all time;

It is the promise of the day

That makes the starry sky sublime;

It is the faith within the fear

That holds us to the life we curse; —

So let us in ourselves revere

The Self which is the Universe!

Let us, the Children of the Night,

Put off the cloak that hides the scar!

Let us be Children of the Light,

And tell the ages what we are!

Three Quatrains

I

As long as Fame's imperious music rings

Will poets mock it with crowned words august;

And haggard men will clamber to be kings

As long as Glory weighs itself in dust.

II

Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled,

Nor shudder for the revels that are done:

The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled,

The strings that Nero fingered are all gone.

III

We cannot crown ourselves with everything,

Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel:

No matter what we are, or what we sing,

Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.

The World

Some are the brothers of all humankind,

And own them, whatsoever their estate;

And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind

With enmity for man's unguarded fate.

For some there is a music all day long

Like flutes in Paradise, they are so glad;

And there is hell's eternal under-song

Of curses and the cries of men gone mad.

Some say the Scheme with love stands luminous,

Some say 't were better back to chaos hurled;

And so 't is what we are that makes for us

The measure and the meaning of the world.

An Old Story

Strange that I did not know him then,

That friend of mine!

I did not even show him then

One friendly sign;

But cursed him for the ways he had

To make me see

My envy of the praise he had

For praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him

Once, in my pride! . . .

I never knew the worth of him

Until he died.

Ballade of a Ship

Down by the flash of the restless water

The dim White Ship like a white bird lay;

Laughing at life and the world they sought her,

And out she swung to the silvering bay.

Then off they flew on their roystering way,

And the keen moon fired the light foam flying

Up from the flood where the faint stars play,

And the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

'T was a king's fair son with a king's fair daughter,

And full three hundred beside, they say, —

Revelling on for the lone, cold slaughter

So soon to seize them and hide them for aye;

But they danced and they drank and their souls grew gay,

Nor ever they knew of a ghoul's eye spying

Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray

Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her

(This wild white bird) for the sea-fiend's prey:

The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her,

And hurled her down where the dead men stay.

A torturing silence of wan dismay —

Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying —

Then down they sank to slumber and sway

Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

ENVOY

Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway

Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying? —

Or does love still shudder and steel still slay,

Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?

Ballade by the Fire

Slowly I smoke and hug my knee,

The while a witless masquerade

Of things that only children see

Floats in a mist of light and shade:

They pass, a flimsy cavalcade,

And with a weak, remindful glow,

The falling embers break and fade,

As one by one the phantoms go.

Then, with a melancholy glee

To think where once my fancy strayed,

I muse on what the years may be

Whose coming tales are all unsaid,

Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid

Within their shadowed niches, grow

By grim degrees to pick and spade,

As one by one the phantoms go.

But then, what though the mystic Three

Around me ply their merry trade? —

And Charon soon may carry me

Across the gloomy Stygian glade? —

Be up, my soul! nor be afraid

Of what some unborn year may show;

But mind your human debts are paid,

As one by one the phantoms go.

ENVOY

Life is the game that must be played:

This truth at least, good friend, we know;

So live and laugh, nor be dismayed

As one by one the phantoms go.

Ballade of Broken Flutes

(To A. T. Schumann.)

In dreams I crossed a barren land,

A land of ruin, far away;

Around me hung on every hand

A deathful stillness of decay;

And silent, as in bleak dismay

That song should thus forsaken be,

On that forgotten ground there lay

The broken flutes of Arcady.

The forest that was all so grand

When pipes and tabors had their sway

Stood leafless now, a ghostly band

Of skeletons in cold array.

A lonely surge of ancient spray

Told of an unforgetful sea,

But iron blows had hushed for aye

The broken flutes of Arcady.

No more by summer breezes fanned,

The place was desolate and gray;

But still my dream was to command

New life into that shrunken clay.

I tried it. Yes, you scan to-day,

With uncommiserating glee,

The songs of one who strove to play

The broken flutes of Arcady.

ENVOY

So, Rock, I join the common fray,

To fight where Mammon may decree;

And leave, to crumble as they may,

The broken flutes of Arcady.

Ballade of Dead Friends

As we the withered ferns

By the roadway lying,

Time, the jester, spurns

All our prayers and prying —

All our tears and sighing,

Sorrow, change, and woe —

All our where-and-whying

For friends that come and go.

Life awakes and burns,

Age and death defying,

Till at last it learns

All but Love is dying;

Love's the trade we're plying,

God has willed it so;

Shrouds are what we're buying

For friends that come and go.

Man forever yearns

For the thing that's flying.

Everywhere he turns,

Men to dust are drying, —

Dust that wanders, eying

(With eyes that hardly glow)

New faces, dimly spying

For friends that come and go.

ENVOY

And thus we all are nighing

The truth we fear to know:

Death will end our crying

For friends that come and go.

Her Eyes

Up from the street and the crowds that went,

Morning and midnight, to and fro,

Still was the room where his days he spent,

And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

Year after year, with his dream shut fast,

He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim,

For the love that his brushes had earned at last, —

And the whole world rang with the praise of him.

But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead,

Till his cheeks were sere and his hairs were gray.

"There are women enough, God knows," he said. . . .

"There are stars enough — when the sun's away."

Then he went back to the same still room

That had held his dream in the long ago,

When he buried his days in a nameless tomb,

And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow.

And a passionate humor seized him there —

Seized him and held him until there grew

Like life on his canvas, glowing and fair,

A perilous face — and an angel's, too.

Angel and maiden, and all in one, —

All but the eyes. — They were there, but yet

They seemed somehow like a soul half done.

What was the matter? Did God forget? . . .

But he wrought them at last with a skill so sure

That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman, —

With a gleam of heaven to make them pure,

And a glimmer of hell to make them human.

God never forgets. — And he worships her

There in that same still room of his,

For his wife, and his constant arbiter

Of the world that was and the world that is.

And he wonders yet what her love could be

To punish him after that strife so grim;

But the longer he lives with her eyes to see,

The plainer it all comes back to him.

Two Men

There be two men of all mankind

That I should like to know about;

But search and question where I will,

I cannot ever find them out.

Melchizedek he praised the Lord,

And gave some wine to Abraham;

But who can tell what else he did

Must be more learned than I am.

Ucalegon he lost his house

When Agamemnon came to Troy;

But who can tell me who he was —

I'll pray the gods to give him joy.

There be two men of all mankind

That I'm forever thinking on:

They chase me everywhere I go, —

Melchizedek, Ucalegon.

Villanelle of Change

Since Persia fell at Marathon,

The yellow years have gathered fast:

Long centuries have come and gone.

And yet (they say) the place will don

A phantom fury of the past,

Since Persia fell at Marathon;

And as of old, when Helicon

Trembled and swayed with rapture vast

(Long centuries have come and gone),

This ancient plain, when night comes on,

Shakes to a ghostly battle-blast,

Since Persia fell at Marathon.

But into soundless Acheron

The glory of Greek shame was cast:

Long centuries have come and gone,

The suns of Hellas have all shone,

The first has fallen to the last: —

Since Persia fell at Marathon,

Long centuries have come and gone.

John Evereldown

"Where are you going to-night, to-night, —

Where are you going, John Evereldown?

There's never the sign of a star in sight,

Nor a lamp that's nearer than Tilbury Town.

Why do you stare as a dead man might?

Where are you pointing away from the light?

And where are you going to-night, to-night, —

Where are you going, John Evereldown?"

"Right through the forest, where none can see,

There's where I'm going, to Tilbury Town.

The men are asleep, — or awake, may be, —

But the women are calling John Evereldown.

Ever and ever they call for me,

And while they call can a man be free?

So right through the forest, where none can see,

There's where I'm going, to Tilbury Town."

"But why are you going so late, so late, —

Why are you going, John Evereldown?

Though the road be smooth and the path be straight,

There are two long leagues to Tilbury Town.

Come in by the fire, old man, and wait!

Why do you chatter out there by the gate?

And why are you going so late, so late, —

Why are you going, John Evereldown?"

"I follow the women wherever they call, —

That's why I'm going to Tilbury Town.

God knows if I pray to be done with it all,

But God is no friend to John Evereldown.

So the clouds may come and the rain may fall,

The shadows may creep and the dead men crawl, —

But I follow the women wherever they call,

And that's why I'm going to Tilbury Town."

Luke Havergal

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal, —

There where the vines cling crimson on the wall, —

And in the twilight wait for what will come.

The wind will moan, the leaves will whisper some —

Whisper of her, and strike you as they fall;

But go, and if you trust her she will call.

Go to the western gate, Luke Havergal —

Luke Havergal.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies

To rift the fiery night that's in your eyes;

But there, where western glooms are gathering,

The dark will end the dark, if anything:

God slays Himself with every leaf that flies,

And hell is more than half of paradise.

No, there is not a dawn in eastern skies —

In eastern skies.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this, —

Out of a grave I come to quench the kiss

That flames upon your forehead with a glow

That blinds you to the way that you must go.

Yes, there is yet one way to where she is, —

Bitter, but one that faith can never miss.

Out of a grave I come to tell you this —

To tell you this.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal,

There are the crimson leaves upon the wall.

Go, — for the winds are tearing them away, —

Nor think to riddle the dead words they say,

Nor any more to feel them as they fall;

But go! and if you trust her she will call.

There is the western gate, Luke Havergal —

Luke Havergal.

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.

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.

Two Octaves

I

Not by the grief that stuns and overwhelms

All outward recognition of revealed

And righteous omnipresence are the days

Of most of us affrighted and diseased,

But rather by the common snarls of life

That come to test us and to strengthen us

In this the prentice-age of discontent,

Rebelliousness, faint-heartedness, and shame.

II

When through hot fog the fulgid sun looks down

Upon a stagnant earth where listless men

Laboriously dawdle, curse, and sweat,

Disqualified, unsatisfied, inert, —

It seems to me somehow that God himself

Scans with a close reproach what I have done,

Counts with an unphrased patience my arrears,

And fathoms my unprofitable thoughts.

Calvary

Friendless and faint, with martyred steps and slow,

Faint for the flesh, but for the spirit free,

Stung by the mob that came to see the show,

The Master toiled along to Calvary;

We gibed him, as he went, with houndish glee,

Till his dimmed eyes for us did overflow;

We cursed his vengeless hands thrice wretchedly, —

And this was nineteen hundred years ago.

But after nineteen hundred years the shame

Still clings, and we have not made good the loss

That outraged faith has entered in his name.

Ah, when shall come love's courage to be strong!

Tell me, O Lord — tell me, O Lord, how long

Are we to keep Christ writhing on the cross!

Dear Friends

Dear friends, reproach me not for what I do,

Nor counsel me, nor pity me; nor say

That I am wearing half my life away

For bubble-work that only fools pursue.

And if my bubbles be too small for you,

Blow bigger then your own: the games we play

To fill the frittered minutes of a day,

Good glasses are to read the spirit through.

And whoso reads may get him some shrewd skill;

And some unprofitable scorn resign,

To praise the very thing that he deplores;

So, friends (dear friends), remember, if you will,

The shame I win for singing is all mine,

The gold I miss for dreaming is all yours.

The Story of the Ashes and the Flame

No matter why, nor whence, nor when she came,

There was her place. No matter what men said,

No matter what she was; living or dead,

Faithful or not, he loved her all the same.

The story was as old as human shame,

But ever since that lonely night she fled,

With books to blind him, he had only read

The story of the ashes and the flame.

There she was always coming pretty soon

To fool him back, with penitent scared eyes

That had in them the laughter of the moon

For baffled lovers, and to make him think —

Before she gave him time enough to wink —

Sin's kisses were the keys to Paradise.

For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold

Sweeping the chords of Hellas with firm hand,

He wakes lost echoes from song's classic shore,

And brings their crystal cadence back once more

To touch the clouds and sorrows of a land

Where God's truth, cramped and fettered with a band

Of iron creeds, he cheers with golden lore

Of heroes and the men that long before

Wrought the romance of ages yet unscanned.

Still does a cry through sad Valhalla go

For Balder, pierced with Lok's unhappy spray —

For Balder, all but spared by Frea's charms;

And still does art's imperial vista show,

On the hushed sands of Oxus, far away,

Young Sohrab dying in his father's arms.

Amaryllis

Once, when I wandered in the woods alone,

An old man tottered up to me and said,

"Come, friend, and see the grave that I have made

For Amaryllis." There was in the tone

Of his complaint such quaver and such moan

That I took pity on him and obeyed,

And long stood looking where his hands had laid

An ancient woman, shrunk to skin and bone.

Far out beyond the forest I could hear

The calling of loud progress, and the bold

Incessant scream of commerce ringing clear;

But though the trumpets of the world were glad,

It made me lonely and it made me sad

To think that Amaryllis had grown old.

Kosmos

Ah, — shuddering men that falter and shrink so

To look on death, — what were the days we live,

Where life is half a struggle to forgive,

But for the love that finds us when we go?

Is God a jester? Does he laugh and throw

Poor branded wretches here to sweat and strive

For some vague end that never shall arrive?

And is He not yet weary of the show?

Think of it, all ye millions that have planned,

And only planned, the largess of hard youth!

Think of it, all ye builders on the sand,

Whose works are down! — Is love so small, forsooth?

Be brave! To-morrow you will understand

The doubt, the pain, the triumph, and the Truth!

Zola

Because he puts the compromising chart

Of hell before your eyes, you are afraid;

Because he counts the price that you have paid

For innocence, and counts it from the start,

You loathe him. But he sees the human heart

Of God meanwhile, and in God's hand has weighed

Your squeamish and emasculate crusade

Against the grim dominion of his art.

Never until we conquer the uncouth

Connivings of our shamed indifference

(We call it Christian faith!) are we to scan

The racked and shrieking hideousness of Truth

To find, in hate's polluted self-defence

Throbbing, the pulse, the divine heart of man.

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.

Aaron Stark

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.

The Garden

There is a fenceless garden overgrown

With buds and blossoms and all sorts of leaves;

And once, among the roses and the sheaves,

The Gardener and I were there alone.

He led me to the plot where I had thrown

The fennel of my days on wasted ground,

And in that riot of sad weeds I found

The fruitage of a life that was my own.

My life! Ah, yes, there was my life, indeed!

And there were all the lives of humankind;

And they were like a book that I could read,

Whose every leaf, miraculously signed,

Outrolled itself from Thought's eternal seed,

Love-rooted in God's garden of the mind.

Cliff Klingenhagen

Cliff Klingenhagen had me in to dine

With him one day; and after soup and meat,

And all the other things there were to eat,

Cliff took two glasses and filled one with wine

And one with wormwood. Then, without a sign

For me to choose at all, he took the draught

Of bitterness himself, and lightly quaffed

It off, and said the other one was mine.

And when I asked him what the deuce he meant

By doing that, he only looked at me

And grinned, and said it was a way of his.

And though I know the fellow, I have spent

Long time a-wondering when I shall be

As happy as Cliff Klingenhagen is.

Charles Carville's Eyes

A melancholy face Charles Carville had,

But not so melancholy as it seemed, —

When once you knew him, — for his mouth redeemed

His insufficient eyes, forever sad:

In them there was no life-glimpse, good or bad, —

Nor joy nor passion in them ever gleamed;

His mouth was all of him that ever beamed,

His eyes were sorry, but his mouth was glad.

He never was a fellow that said much,

And half of what he did say was not heard

By many of us: we were out of touch

With all his whims and all his theories

Till he was dead, so those blank eyes of his

Might speak them. Then we heard them, every word.

The Dead Village

Here there is death. But even here, they say, —

Here where the dull sun shines this afternoon

As desolate as ever the dead moon

Did glimmer on dead Sardis, — men were gay;

And there were little children here to play,

With small soft hands that once did keep in tune

The strings that stretch from heaven, till too soon

The change came, and the music passed away.

Now there is nothing but the ghosts of things, —

No life, no love, no children, and no men;

And over the forgotten place there clings

The strange and unrememberable light

That is in dreams. The music failed, and then

God frowned, and shut the village from His sight.

Boston

My northern pines are good enough for me,

But there's a town my memory uprears —

A town that always like a friend appears,

And always in the sunrise by the sea.

And over it, somehow, there seems to be

A downward flash of something new and fierce,

That ever strives to clear, but never clears

The dimness of a charmed antiquity.

Two Sonnets

I

Just as I wonder at the twofold screen

Of twisted innocence that you would plait

For eyes that uncourageously await

The coming of a kingdom that has been,

So do I wonder what God's love can mean

To you that all so strangely estimate

The purpose and the consequent estate

Of one short shuddering step to the Unseen.

No, I have not your backward faith to shrink

Lone-faring from the doorway of God's home

To find Him in the names of buried men;

Nor your ingenious recreance to think

We cherish, in the life that is to come,

The scattered features of dead friends again.

II

Never until our souls are strong enough

To plunge into the crater of the Scheme —

Triumphant in the flash there to redeem

Love's handsel and forevermore to slough,

Like cerements at a played-out masque, the rough

And reptile skins of us whereon we set

The stigma of scared years — are we to get

Where atoms and the ages are one stuff.

Nor ever shall we know the cursed waste

Of life in the beneficence divine

Of starlight and of sunlight and soul-shine

That we have squandered in sin's frail distress,

Till we have drunk, and trembled at the taste,

The mead of Thought's prophetic endlessness.

The Clerks

I did not think that I should find them there

When I came back again; but there they stood,

As in the days they dreamed of when young blood

Was in their cheeks and women called them fair.

Be sure, they met me with an ancient air, —

And yes, there was a shop-worn brotherhood

About them; but the men were just as good,

And just as human as they ever were.

And you that ache so much to be sublime,

And you that feed yourselves with your descent,

What comes of all your visions and your fears?

Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time,

Tiering the same dull webs of discontent,

Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.

Fleming Helphenstine

At first I thought there was a superfine

Persuasion in his face; but the free glow

That filled it when he stopped and cried, "Hollo!"

Shone joyously, and so I let it shine.

He said his name was Fleming Helphenstine,

But be that as it may; — I only know

He talked of this and that and So-and-So,

And laughed and chaffed like any friend of mine.

But soon, with a queer, quick frown, he looked at me,

And I looked hard at him; and there we gazed

With a strained shame that made us cringe and wince:

Then, with a wordless clogged apology

That sounded half confused and half amazed,

He dodged, — and I have never seen him since.

For a Book by Thomas Hardy

With searching feet, through dark circuitous ways,

I plunged and stumbled; round me, far and near,

Quaint hordes of eyeless phantoms did appear,

Twisting and turning in a bootless chase, —

When, like an exile given by God's grace

To feel once more a human atmosphere,

I caught the world's first murmur, large and clear,

Flung from a singing river's endless race.

Then, through a magic twilight from below,

I heard its grand sad song as in a dream:

Life's wild infinity of mirth and woe

It sang me; and, with many a changing gleam,

Across the music of its onward flow

I saw the cottage lights of Wessex beam.

Thomas Hood

The man who cloaked his bitterness within

This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries,

God never gave to look with common eyes

Upon a world of anguish and of sin:

His brother was the branded man of Lynn;

And there are woven with his jollities

The nameless and eternal tragedies

That render hope and hopelessness akin.

We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel

A still chord sorrow-swept, — a weird unrest;

And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal,

As if the very ghost of mirth were dead —

As if the joys of time to dreams had fled,

Or sailed away with Ines to the West.

The Miracle

"Dear brother, dearest friend, when I am dead,

And you shall see no more this face of mine,

Let nothing but red roses be the sign

Of the white life I lost for him," she said;

"No, do not curse him, — pity him instead;

Forgive him! — forgive me! . . God's anodyne

For human hate is pity; and the wine

That makes men wise, forgiveness. I have read

Love's message in love's murder, and I die."

And so they laid her just where she would lie, —

Under red roses. Red they bloomed and fell;

But when flushed autumn and the snows went by,

And spring came, — lo, from every bud's green shell

Burst a white blossom. — Can love reason why?

Horace to Leuconoe

I pray you not, Leuconoe, to pore

With unpermitted eyes on what may be

Appointed by the gods for you and me,

Nor on Chaldean figures any more.

'T were infinitely better to implore

The present only: — whether Jove decree

More winters yet to come, or whether he

Make even this, whose hard, wave-eaten shore

Shatters the Tuscan seas to-day, the last —

Be wise withal, and rack your wine, nor fill

Your bosom with large hopes; for while I sing,

The envious close of time is narrowing; —

So seize the day, — or ever it be past, —

And let the morrow come for what it will.

Reuben Bright

Because he was a butcher and thereby

Did earn an honest living (and did right),

I would not have you think that Reuben Bright

Was any more a brute than you or I;

For when they told him that his wife must die,

He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,

And cried like a great baby half that night,

And made the women cry to see him cry.

And after she was dead, and he had paid

The singers and the sexton and the rest,

He packed a lot of things that she had made

Most mournfully away in an old chest

Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs

In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.

The Altar

Alone, remote, nor witting where I went,

I found an altar builded in a dream —

A fiery place, whereof there was a gleam

So swift, so searching, and so eloquent

Of upward promise, that love's murmur, blent

With sorrow's warning, gave but a supreme

Unending impulse to that human stream

Whose flood was all for the flame's fury bent.

Alas! I said, — the world is in the wrong.

But the same quenchless fever of unrest

That thrilled the foremost of that martyred throng

Thrilled me, and I awoke . . . and was the same

Bewildered insect plunging for the flame

That burns, and must burn somehow for the best.

The Tavern

Whenever I go by there nowadays

And look at the rank weeds and the strange grass,

The torn blue curtains and the broken glass,

I seem to be afraid of the old place;

And something stiffens up and down my face,

For all the world as if I saw the ghost

Of old Ham Amory, the murdered host,

With his dead eyes turned on me all aglaze.

The Tavern has a story, but no man

Can tell us what it is. We only know

That once long after midnight, years ago,

A stranger galloped up from Tilbury Town,

Who brushed, and scared, and all but overran

That skirt-crazed reprobate, John Evereldown.

Sonnet

Oh for a poet — for a beacon bright

To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;

To spirit back the Muses, long astray,

And flush Parnassus with a newer light;

To put these little sonnet-men to flight

Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way,

Songs without souls, that flicker for a day,

To vanish in irrevocable night.

What does it mean, this barren age of ours?

Here are the men, the women, and the flowers,

The seasons, and the sunset, as before.

What does it mean? Shall not one bard arise

To wrench one banner from the western skies,

And mark it with his name forevermore?

George Crabbe

Give him the darkest inch your shelf allows,

Hide him in lonely garrets, if you will, —

But his hard, human pulse is throbbing still

With the sure strength that fearless truth endows.

In spite of all fine science disavows,

Of his plain excellence and stubborn skill

There yet remains what fashion cannot kill,

Though years have thinned the laurel from his brows.

Whether or not we read him, we can feel

From time to time the vigor of his name

Against us like a finger for the shame

And emptiness of what our souls reveal

In books that are as altars where we kneel

To consecrate the flicker, not the flame.

Credo

I cannot find my way: there is no star

In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;

And there is not a whisper in the air

Of any living voice but one so far

That I can hear it only as a bar

Of lost, imperial music, played when fair

And angel fingers wove, and unaware,

Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.

No, there is not a glimmer, nor a call,

For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,

The black and awful chaos of the night;

For through it all, — above, beyond it all, —

I know the far-sent message of the years,

I feel the coming glory of the Light!

On the Night of a Friend's Wedding

If ever I am old, and all alone,

I shall have killed one grief, at any rate;

For then, thank God, I shall not have to wait

Much longer for the sheaves that I have sown.

The devil only knows what I have done,

But here I am, and here are six or eight

Good friends, who most ingenuously prate

About my songs to such and such a one.

But everything is all askew to-night, —

As if the time were come, or almost come,

For their untenanted mirage of me

To lose itself and crumble out of sight,

Like a tall ship that floats above the foam

A little while, and then breaks utterly.

Sonnet

The master and the slave go hand in hand,

Though touch be lost. The poet is a slave,

And there be kings do sorrowfully crave

The joyance that a scullion may command.

But, ah, the sonnet-slave must understand

The mission of his bondage, or the grave

May clasp his bones, or ever he shall save

The perfect word that is the poet's wand!

The sonnet is a crown, whereof the rhymes

Are for Thought's purest gold the jewel-stones;

But shapes and echoes that are never done

Will haunt the workshop, as regret sometimes

Will bring with human yearning to sad thrones

The crash of battles that are never won.

Verlaine

Why do you dig like long-clawed scavengers

To touch the covered corpse of him that fled

The uplands for the fens, and rioted

Like a sick satyr with doom's worshippers?

Come! let the grass grow there; and leave his verse

To tell the story of the life he led.

Let the man go: let the dead flesh be dead,

And let the worms be its biographers.

Song sloughs away the sin to find redress

In art's complete remembrance: nothing clings

For long but laurel to the stricken brow

That felt the Muse's finger; nothing less

Than hell's fulfilment of the end of things

Can blot the star that shines on Paris now.

Sonnet

When we can all so excellently give

The measure of love's wisdom with a blow, —

Why can we not in turn receive it so,

And end this murmur for the life we live?

And when we do so frantically strive

To win strange faith, why do we shun to know

That in love's elemental over-glow

God's wholeness gleams with light superlative?

Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all,

Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose, —

Or anything God ever made that grows, —

Nor let the smallest vision of it slip,

Till you can read, as on Belshazzar's wall,

The glory of eternal partnership!

Supremacy

There is a drear and lonely tract of hell

From all the common gloom removed afar:

A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are,

Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell.

I walked among them and I knew them well:

Men I had slandered on life's little star

For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar

Upon their brows of woe ineffable.

But as I went majestic on my way,

Into the dark they vanished, one by one,

Till, with a shaft of God's eternal day,

The dream of all my glory was undone, —

And, with a fool's importunate dismay,

I heard the dead men singing in the sun.

The Night Before

Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen!

Look in my face, first; search every line there;

Mark every feature, — chin, lip, and forehead!

Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson

You read there; measure my nose, and tell me

Where I am wanting! A man's nose, Dominie,

Is often the cast of his inward spirit;

So mark mine well. But why do you smile so?

Pity, or what? Is it written all over,

This face of mine, with a brute's confession?

Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars?

Or is it because there is something better —

A glimmer of good, maybe — or a shadow

Of something that's followed me down from childhood —

Followed me all these years and kept me,

Spite of my slips and sins and follies,

Spite of my last red sin, my murder, —

Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind?

And you smile for that? You're a good man, Dominie,

The one good man in the world who knows me, —

My one good friend in a world that mocks me,

Here in this hard stone cage. But I leave it

To-morrow. To-morrow! My God! am I crying?

Are these things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened?

I, who swore I should go to the scaffold

With big strong steps, and — No more. I thank you,

But no — I am all right now! No! — listen!

I am here to be hanged; to be hanged to-morrow

At six o'clock, when the sun is rising.

And why am I here? Not a soul can tell you

But this poor shivering thing before you,

This fluttering wreck of the man God made him,

For God knows what wild reason. Hear me,

And learn from my lips the truth of my story.

There's nothing strange in what I shall tell you,

Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly, —

But damnably human, — and you shall hear it.

Not one of those little black lawyers had guessed it;

The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it;

And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it.

Once there were three in the world who could tell it;

Now there are two. There'll be two to-morrow, —

You, my friend, and — But there's the story: —

When I was a boy the world was heaven.

I never knew then that the men and the women

Who petted and called me a brave big fellow

Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom —

Which comes with the years, you know — soon showed me

The secret of all my glittering childhood,

The broken key to the fairies' castle

That held my life in the fresh, glad season

When I was the king of the earth. Then slowly —

And yet so swiftly! — there came the knowledge

That the marvellous life I had lived was my life;

That the glorious world I had loved was my world;

And that every man, and every woman,

And every child was a different being,

Wrought with a different heat, and fired

With passions born of a single spirit;

That the pleasure I felt was not their pleasure,

Nor my sorrow — a kind of nameless pity

For something, I knew not what — their sorrow.

And thus was I taught my first hard lesson, —

The lesson we suffer the most in learning:

That a happy man is a man forgetful

Of all the torturing ills around him.

When or where I first met the woman

I cherished and made my wife, no matter.

Enough to say that I found her and kept her

Here in my heart with as pure a devotion

As ever Christ felt for his brothers. Forgive me

For naming His name in your patient presence;

But I feel my words, and the truth I utter

Is God's own truth. I loved that woman, —

Not for her face, but for something fairer,

Something diviner, I thought, than beauty:

I loved the spirit — the human something

That seemed to chime with my own condition,

And make soul-music when we were together;

And we were never apart, from the moment

My eyes flashed into her eyes the message

That swept itself in a quivering answer

Back through my strange lost being. My pulses

Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure

Of this great world grew small and smaller,

Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean

Closed at last in a mist all golden

Around us two. And we stood for a season

Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming

That we were the king and the queen of the fire

That reddened the clouds of love that held us

Blind to the new world soon to be ours —

Ours to seize and sway. The passion

Of that great love was a nameless passion,

Bright as the blaze of the sun at noonday,

Wild as the flames of hell; but, mark you,

Never a whit less pure for its fervor.

The baseness in me (for I was human)

Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing

Was left me then but a soul that mingled

Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered

In fearful triumph. When I consider

That helpless love and the cursed folly

That wrecked my life for the sake of a woman

Who broke with a laugh the chains of her marriage

(Whatever the word may mean), I wonder

If all the woe was her sin, or whether

The chains themselves were enough to lead her

In love's despite to break them. . . . Sinners

And saints — I say — are rocked in the cradle,

But never are known till the will within them

Speaks in its own good time. So I foster

Even to-night for the woman who wronged me,

Nothing of hate, nor of love, but a feeling

Of still regret; for the man — But hear me,

And judge for yourself: —

For a time the seasons

Changed and passed in a sweet succession

That seemed to me like an endless music:

Life was a rolling psalm, and the choirs

Of God were glad for our love. I fancied

All this, and more than I dare to tell you

To-night, — yes, more than I dare to remember;

And then — well, the music stopped. There are moments

In all men's lives when it stops, I fancy, —

Or seems to stop, — till it comes to cheer them

Again with a larger sound. The curtain

Of life just then is lifted a little

To give to their sight new joys — new sorrows —

Or nothing at all, sometimes. I was watching

The slow, sweet scenes of a golden picture,

Flushed and alive with a long delusion

That made the murmur of home, when I shuddered

And felt like a knife that awful silence

That comes when the music goes — forever.

The truth came over my life like a darkness

Over a forest where one man wanders,

Worse than alone. For a time I staggered

And stumbled on with a weak persistence

After the phantom of hope that darted

And dodged like a frightened thing before me,

To quit me at last, and vanish. Nothing

Was left me then but the curse of living

And bearing through all my days the fever

And thirst of a poisoned love. Were I stronger,

Or weaker, perhaps my scorn had saved me,

Given me strength to crush my sorrow

With hate for her and the world that praised her —

To have left her, then and there — to have conquered

That old false life with a new and a wiser, —

Such things are easy in words. You listen,

And frown, I suppose, that I never mention

That beautiful word, FORGIVE! — I forgave her

First of all; and I praised kind Heaven

That I was a brave, clean man to do it;

And then I tried to forget. Forgiveness!

What does it mean when the one forgiven

Shivers and weeps and clings and kisses

The credulous fool that holds her, and tells him

A thousand things of a good man's mercy,

And then slips off with a laugh and plunges

Back to the sin she has quit for a season,

To tell him that hell and the world are better

For her than a prophet's heaven? Believe me,

The love that dies ere its flames are wasted

In search of an alien soul is better,

Better by far than the lonely passion

That burns back into the heart that feeds it.

For I loved her still, and the more she mocked me, —

Fooled with her endless pleading promise

Of future faith, — the more I believed her

The penitent thing she seemed; and the stronger

Her choking arms and her small hot kisses

Bound me and burned my brain to pity,

The more she grew to the heavenly creature

That brightened the life I had lost forever.

The truth was gone somehow for the moment;

The curtain fell for a time; and I fancied

We were again like gods together,

Loving again with the old glad rapture.

But scenes like these, too often repeated,

Failed at last, and her guile was wasted.

I made an end of her shrewd caresses

And told her a few straight words. She took them

Full at their worth — and the farce was over.

. . . . .

At first my dreams of the past upheld me,

But they were a short support: the present

Pushed them away, and I fell. The mission

Of life (whatever it was) was blasted;

My game was lost. And I met the winner

Of that foul deal as a sick slave gathers

His painful strength at the sight of his master;

And when he was past I cursed him, fearful

Of that strange chance which makes us mighty

Or mean, or both. I cursed him and hated

The stones he pressed with his heel; I followed

His easy march with a backward envy,

And cursed myself for the beast within me.

But pride is the master of love, and the vision

Of those old days grew faint and fainter:

The counterfeit wife my mercy sheltered

Was nothing now but a woman, — a woman

Out of my way and out of my nature.

My battle with blinded love was over,

My battle with aching pride beginning.

If I was the loser at first, I wonder

If I am the winner now! . . . I doubt it.

My life is a losing game; and to-morrow —

To-morrow! — Christ! did I say to-morrow? . . .

Is your brandy good for death? . . . There, — listen: —

When love goes out, and a man is driven

To shun mankind for the scars that make him

A joke for all chattering tongues, he carries

A double burden. The woes I suffered

After that hard betrayal made me

Pity, at first, all breathing creatures

On this bewildered earth. I studied

Their faces and made for myself the story

Of all their scattered lives. Like brothers

And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished

A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy

Between those people and me. But somehow,

As time went on, there came queer glances

Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me

Harassed my pride with a crazed impression

That every face in the surging city

Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers,

Now and then, as I walked and wearied

My wasted life twice over in bearing

With all my sorrow the sorrows of others, —

Till I found myself their fool. Then I trembled, —

A poor scared thing, — and their prying faces

Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing

At me and my fate. My God, I could feel it —

That laughter! And then the children caught it;

And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened.

And then when I met the man who had weakened

A woman's love to his own desire,

It seemed to me that all hell were laughing

In fiendish concert! I was their victim —

And his, and hate's. And there was the struggle!

As long as the earth we tread holds something

A tortured heart can love, the meaning

Of life is not wholly blurred; but after

The last loved thing in the world has left us,

We know the triumph of hate. The glory

Of good goes out forever; the beacon

Of sin is the light that leads us downward —

Down to the fiery end. The road runs

Right through hell; and the souls that follow

The cursed ways where its windings lead them

Suffer enough, I say, to merit

All grace that a God can give. — The fashion

Of our belief is to lift all beings

Born for a life that knows no struggle

In sin's tight snares to eternal glory —

All apart from the branded millions

Who carry through life their faces graven

With sure brute scars that tell the story

Of their foul, fated passions. Science

Has yet no salve to smooth or soften

The cradle-scars of a tyrant's visage;

No drug to purge from the vital essence

Of souls the sleeping venom. Virtue

May flower in hell, when its roots are twisted

And wound with the roots of vice; but the stronger

Never is known till there comes that battle

With sin to prove the victor. Perilous

Things are these demons we call our passions:

Slaves are we of their roving fancies,

Fools of their devilish glee. — You think me,

I know, in this maundering way designing

To lighten the load of my guilt and cast it

Half on the shoulders of God. But hear me!

I'm partly a man, — for all my weakness, —

If weakness it were to stand and murder

Before men's eyes the man who had murdered

Me, and driven my burning forehead

With horns for the world to laugh at. Trust me!

And try to believe my words but a portion

Of what God's purpose made me! The coward

Within me cries for this; and I beg you

Now, as I come to the end, to remember

That women and men are on earth to travel

All on a different road. Hereafter

The roads may meet. . . . I trust in something —

I know not what. . . .

Well, this was the way of it: —

Stung with the shame and the secret fury

That comes to the man who has thrown his pittance

Of self at a traitor's feet, I wandered

Weeks and weeks in a baffled frenzy,

Till at last the devil spoke. I heard him,

And laughed at the love that strove to touch me, —

The dead, lost love; and I gripped the demon

Close to my breast, and held him, praising

The fates and the furies that gave me the courage

To follow his wild command. Forgetful

Of all to come when the work was over, —

There came to me then no stony vision

Of these three hundred days, — I cherished

An awful joy in my brain. I pondered

And weighed the thing in my mind, and gloried

In life to think that I was to conquer

Death at his own dark door, — and chuckled

To think of it done so cleanly. One evening

I knew that my time had come. I shuddered

A little, but rather for doubt than terror,

And followed him, — led by the nameless devil

I worshipped and called my brother. The city

Shone like a dream that night; the windows

Flashed with a piercing flame, and the pavements

Pulsed and swayed with a warmth — or something

That seemed so then to my feet — and thrilled me

With a quick, dizzy joy; and the women

And men, like marvellous things of magic,

Floated and laughed and sang by my shoulder,

Sent with a wizard motion. Through it

And over and under it all there sounded

A murmur of life, like bees; and I listened

And laughed again to think of the flower

That grew, blood-red, for me! . . . This fellow

Was one of the popular sort who flourish

Unruffled where gods would fall. For a conscience

He carried a snug deceit that made him

The man of the time and the place, whatever

The time or the place might be. Were he sounding,

With a genial craft that cloaked its purpose,

Nigh to itself, the depth of a woman

Fooled with his brainless art, or sending

The midnight home with songs and bottles, —

The cad was there, and his ease forever

Shone with the smooth and slippery polish

That tells the snake. That night he drifted

Into an up-town haunt and ordered —

Whatever it was — with a soft assurance

That made me mad as I stood behind him,

Gripping his death, and waited. Coward,

I think, is the name the world has given

To men like me; but I'll swear I never

Thought of my own disgrace when I shot him —

Yes, in the back, — I know it, I know it

Now; but what if I do? . . . As I watched him

Lying there dead in the scattered sawdust,

Wet with a day's blown froth, I noted

That things were still; that the walnut tables,

Where men but a moment before were sitting,

Were gone; that a screen of something around me

Shut them out of my sight. But the gilded

Signs of a hundred beers and whiskeys

Flashed from the walls above, and the mirrors

And glasses behind the bar were lighted

In some strange way, and into my spirit

A thousand shafts of terrible fire

Burned like death, and I fell. The story

Of what came then, you know.

But tell me,

What does the whole thing mean? What are we, —

Slaves of an awful ignorance? puppets

Pulled by a fiend? or gods, without knowing it?

Do we shut from ourselves our own salvation, —

Or what do we do! I tell you, Dominie,

There are times in the lives of us poor devils

When heaven and hell get mixed. Though conscience

May come like a whisper of Christ to warn us

Away from our sins, it is lost or laughed at, —

And then we fall. And for all who have fallen —

Even for him — I hold no malice,

Nor much compassion: a mightier mercy

Than mine must shrive him. — And I — I am going

Into the light? — or into the darkness?

Why do I sit through these sickening hours,

And hope? Good God! are they hours? — hours?

Yes! I am done with days. And to-morrow —

We two may meet! To-morrow! — To-morrow! . . .

Walt Whitman

The master-songs are ended, and the man

That sang them is a name. And so is God

A name; and so is love, and life, and death,

And everything. But we, who are too blind

To read what we have written, or what faith

Has written for us, do not understand:

We only blink, and wonder.

Last night it was the song that was the man,

But now it is the man that is the song.

We do not hear him very much to-day:

His piercing and eternal cadence rings

Too pure for us — too powerfully pure,

Too lovingly triumphant, and too large;

But there are some that hear him, and they know

That he shall sing to-morrow for all men,

And that all time shall listen.

The master-songs are ended? Rather say

No songs are ended that are ever sung,

And that no names are dead names. When we write

Men's letters on proud marble or on sand,

We write them there forever.

The Chorus of Old Men in "Aegeus"

Ye gods that have a home beyond the world,

Ye that have eyes for all man's agony,

Ye that have seen this woe that we have seen, —

Look with a just regard,

And with an even grace,

Here on the shattered corpse of a shattered king,

Here on a suffering world where men grow old

And wander like sad shadows till, at last,

Out of the flare of life,

Out of the whirl of years,

Into the mist they go,

Into the mist of death.

O shades of you that loved him long before

The cruel threads of that black sail were spun,

May loyal arms and ancient welcomings

Receive him once again

Who now no longer moves

Here in this flickering dance of changing days,

Where a battle is lost and won for a withered wreath,

And the black master Death is over all,

To chill with his approach,

To level with his touch,

The reigning strength of youth,

The fluttered heart of age.

Woe for the fateful day when Delphi's word was lost —

Woe for the loveless prince of Aethra's line!

Woe for a father's tears and the curse of a king's release —

Woe for the wings of pride and the shafts of doom! —

And thou, the saddest wind

That ever blew from Crete,

Sing the fell tidings back to that thrice unhappy ship! —

Sing to the western flame,

Sing to the dying foam,

A dirge for the sundered years and a dirge for the years to be!

Better his end had been as the end of a cloudless day,

Bright, by the word of Zeus, with a golden star,

Wrought of a golden fame, and flung to the central sky,

To gleam on a stormless tomb for evermore: —

Whether or not there fell

To the touch of an alien hand

The sheen of his purple robe and the shine of his diadem,

Better his end had been

To die as an old man dies, —

But the fates are ever the fates, and a crown is ever a crown.

The Wilderness

Come away! come away! there's a frost along the marshes,

And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the dead black water;

There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland

Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those that love us.

There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn

Put off the summer's languor with a touch that made us glad

For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,

To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.

Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,
There's an old song calling us to come!

Come away! come away! — for the scenes we leave behind us

Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that's young forever;

And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,

That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.

The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us,

And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years;

But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us

In the strangeness of home-coming, and a faithful woman's eyes.

Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us —
Nothing now to comfort us, but love's road home: —
Over there beyond the darkness there's a window gleams to greet us,
And a warm hearth waits for us within.

Come away! come away! — or the roving-fiend will hold us,

And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:

There are no men yet can leave him when his hands are clutched upon them,

There are none will own his enmity, there are none will call him brother.

So we'll be up and on the way, and the less we brag the better

For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know: —

The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it,

And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.

Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us —
Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,
And the long fall wind on the lake.

Octaves

I

To get at the eternal strength of things,

And fearlessly to make strong songs of it,

Is, to my mind, the mission of that man

The world would call a poet. He may sing

But roughly, and withal ungraciously;

But if he touch to life the one right chord

Wherein God's music slumbers, and awake

To truth one drowsed ambition, he sings well.

II

We thrill too strangely at the master's touch;

We shrink too sadly from the larger self

Which for its own completeness agitates

And undetermines us; we do not feel —

We dare not feel it yet — the splendid shame

Of uncreated failure; we forget,

The while we groan, that God's accomplishment

Is always and unfailingly at hand.

III

To mortal ears the plainest word may ring

Fantastic and unheard-of, and as false

And out of tune as ever to our own

Did ring the prayers of man-made maniacs;

But if that word be the plain word of Truth,

It leaves an echo that begets itself,

Persistent in itself and of itself,

Regenerate, reiterate, replete.

IV

Tumultuously void of a clean scheme

Whereon to build, whereof to formulate,

The legion life that riots in mankind

Goes ever plunging upward, up and down,

Most like some crazy regiment at arms,

Undisciplined of aught but Ignorance,

And ever led resourcelessly along

To brainless carnage by drunk trumpeters.

V

To me the groaning of world-worshippers

Rings like a lonely music played in hell

By one with art enough to cleave the walls

Of heaven with his cadence, but without

The wisdom or the will to comprehend

The strangeness of his own perversity,

And all without the courage to deny

The profit and the pride of his defeat.

VI

While we are drilled in error, we are lost

Alike to truth and usefulness. We think

We are great warriors now, and we can brag

Like Titans; but the world is growing young,

And we, the fools of time, are growing with it: —

We do not fight to-day, we only die;

We are too proud of death, and too ashamed

Of God, to know enough to be alive.

VII

There is one battle-field whereon we fall

Triumphant and unconquered; but, alas!

We are too fleshly fearful of ourselves

To fight there till our days are whirled and blurred

By sorrow, and the ministering wheels

Of anguish take us eastward, where the clouds

Of human gloom are lost against the gleam

That shines on Thought's impenetrable mail.

VIII

When we shall hear no more the cradle-songs

Of ages — when the timeless hymns of Love

Defeat them and outsound them — we shall know

The rapture of that large release which all

Right science comprehends; and we shall read,

With unoppressed and unoffended eyes,

That record of All-Soul whereon God writes

In everlasting runes the truth of Him.

IX

The guerdon of new childhood is repose: —

Once he has read the primer of right thought,

A man may claim between two smithy strokes

Beatitude enough to realize

God's parallel completeness in the vague

And incommensurable excellence

That equitably uncreates itself

And makes a whirlwind of the Universe.

X

There is no loneliness: — no matter where

We go, nor whence we come, nor what good friends

Forsake us in the seeming, we are all

At one with a complete companionship;

And though forlornly joyless be the ways

We travel, the compensate spirit-gleams

Of Wisdom shaft the darkness here and there,

Like scattered lamps in unfrequented streets.

XI

When one that you and I had all but sworn

To be the purest thing God ever made

Bewilders us until at last it seems

An angel has come back restigmatized, —

Faith wavers, and we wonder what there is

On earth to make us faithful any more,

But never are quite wise enough to know

The wisdom that is in that wonderment.

XII

Where does a dead man go? — The dead man dies;

But the free life that would no longer feed

On fagots of outburned and shattered flesh

Wakes to a thrilled invisible advance,

Unchained (or fettered else) of memory;

And when the dead man goes it seems to me

'T were better for us all to do away

With weeping, and be glad that he is gone.

XIII

Still through the dusk of dead, blank-legended,

And unremunerative years we search

To get where life begins, and still we groan

Because we do not find the living spark

Where no spark ever was; and thus we die,

Still searching, like poor old astronomers

Who totter off to bed and go to sleep,

To dream of untriangulated stars.

XIV

With conscious eyes not yet sincere enough

To pierce the glimmered cloud that fluctuates

Between me and the glorifying light

That screens itself with knowledge, I discern

The searching rays of wisdom that reach through

The mist of shame's infirm credulity,

And infinitely wonder if hard words

Like mine have any message for the dead.

XV

I grant you friendship is a royal thing,

But none shall ever know that royalty

For what it is till he has realized

His best friend in himself. 'T is then, perforce,

That man's unfettered faith indemnifies

Of its own conscious freedom the old shame,

And love's revealed infinitude supplants

Of its own wealth and wisdom the old scorn.

XVI

Though the sick beast infect us, we are fraught

Forever with indissoluble Truth,

Wherein redress reveals itself divine,

Transitional, transcendent. Grief and loss,

Disease and desolation, are the dreams

Of wasted excellence; and every dream

Has in it something of an ageless fact

That flouts deformity and laughs at years.

XVII

We lack the courage to be where we are: —

We love too much to travel on old roads,

To triumph on old fields; we love too much

To consecrate the magic of dead things,

And yieldingly to linger by long walls

Of ruin, where the ruinous moonlight

That sheds a lying glory on old stones

Befriends us with a wizard's enmity.

XVIII

Something as one with eyes that look below

The battle-smoke to glimpse the foeman's charge,

We through the dust of downward years may scan

The onslaught that awaits this idiot world

Where blood pays blood for nothing, and where life

Pays life to madness, till at last the ports

Of gilded helplessness be battered through

By the still crash of salvatory steel.

XIX

To you that sit with Sorrow like chained slaves,

And wonder if the night will ever come,

I would say this: The night will never come,

And sorrow is not always. But my words

Are not enough; your eyes are not enough;

The soul itself must insulate the Real,

Or ever you do cherish in this life —

In this life or in any life — repose.

XX

Like a white wall whereon forever breaks

Unsatisfied the tumult of green seas,

Man's unconjectured godliness rebukes

With its imperial silence the lost waves

Of insufficient grief. This mortal surge

That beats against us now is nothing else

Than plangent ignorance. Truth neither shakes

Nor wavers; but the world shakes, and we shriek.

XXI

Nor jewelled phrase nor mere mellifluous rhyme

Reverberates aright, or ever shall,

One cadence of that infinite plain-song

Which is itself all music. Stronger notes

Than any that have ever touched the world

Must ring to tell it — ring like hammer-blows,

Right-echoed of a chime primordial,

On anvils, in the gleaming of God's forge.

XXII

The prophet of dead words defeats himself:

Whoever would acknowledge and include

The foregleam and the glory of the real,

Must work with something else than pen and ink

And painful preparation: he must work

With unseen implements that have no names,

And he must win withal, to do that work,

Good fortitude, clean wisdom, and strong skill.

XXIII

To curse the chilled insistence of the dawn

Because the free gleam lingers; to defraud

The constant opportunity that lives

Unchallenged in all sorrow; to forget

For this large prodigality of gold

That larger generosity of thought, —

These are the fleshly clogs of human greed,

The fundamental blunders of mankind.

XXIV

Forebodings are the fiends of Recreance;

The master of the moment, the clean seer

Of ages, too securely scans what is,

Ever to be appalled at what is not;

He sees beyond the groaning borough lines

Of Hell, God's highways gleaming, and he knows

That Love's complete communion is the end

Of anguish to the liberated man.

XXV

Here by the windy docks I stand alone,

But yet companioned. There the vessel goes,

And there my friend goes with it; but the wake

That melts and ebbs between that friend and me

Love's earnest is of Life's all-purposeful

And all-triumphant sailing, when the ships

Of Wisdom loose their fretful chains and swing

Forever from the crumbled wharves of Time.

Two Quatrains

I

Unity

As eons of incalculable strife

Are in the vision of one moment caught,

So are the common, concrete things of life

Divinely shadowed on the walls of Thought.

II

Paraphrase

We shriek to live, but no man ever lives

Till he has rid the ghost of human breath;

We dream to die, but no man ever dies

Till he has quit the road that runs to death.

Romance

I

Boys

We were all boys, and three of us were friends;

And we were more than friends, it seemed to me: —

Yes, we were more than brothers then, we three. . . .

Brothers? . . . But we were boys, and there it ends.

II

James Wetherell

We never half believed the stuff

They told about James Wetherell;

We always liked him well enough,

And always tried to use him well;

But now some things have come to light,

And James has vanished from our view, —

There is n't very much to write,

There is n't very much to do.

The Torrent

I found a torrent falling in a glen

Where the sun's light shone silvered and leaf-split;

The boom, the foam, and the mad flash of it

All made a magic symphony; but when

I thought upon the coming of hard men

To cut those patriarchal trees away,

And turn to gold the silver of that spray,

I shuddered. Yet a gladness now and then

Did wake me to myself till I was glad

In earnest, and was welcoming the time

For screaming saws to sound above the chime

Of idle waters, and for me to know

The jealous visionings that I had had

Were steps to the great place where trees and torrents go.

L'Envoi

Now in a thought, now in a shadowed word,

Now in a voice that thrills eternity,

Ever there comes an onward phrase to me

Of some transcendent music I have heard;

No piteous thing by soft hands dulcimered,

No trumpet crash of blood-sick victory,

But a glad strain of some still symphony

That no proud mortal touch has ever stirred.

There is no music in the world like this,

No character wherewith to set it down,

No kind of instrument to make it sing.

No kind of instrument? Ah, yes, there is!

And after time and place are overthrown,

God's touch will keep its one chord quivering.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Children of the Night, by

Edwin Arlington Robinson

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT ***

***** This file should be named 313-h.htm or 313-h.zip *****

This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:

http://www.gutenberg.org/3/1/313/

Produced by A. Light, L. Bowser, and David Widger

Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions

will be renamed.

Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no

one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation

(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without

permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,

set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to

copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to

protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project

Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you

charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you

do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the

rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose

such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and

research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do

practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is

subject to the trademark license, especially commercial

redistribution.

*** START: FULL LICENSE ***

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free

distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work

(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project

Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project

Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at

http://gutenberg.org/license).

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to

and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property

(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all

the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy

all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.

If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the

terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or

entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be

used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who

agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few

things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works

even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See

paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement

and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"

or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the

collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an

individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from

copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative

works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg

are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project

Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by

freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of

this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with

the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by

keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project

Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern

what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in

a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check

the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement

before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or

creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project

Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning

the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United

States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate

access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently

whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the

phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project

Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,

copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with

almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or

re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included

with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived

from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is

posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied

and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees

or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work

with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the

work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1

through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the

Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or

1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted

with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution

must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional

terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked

to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the

permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this

work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this

electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without

prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with

active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project

Gutenberg-tm License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,

compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any

word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or

distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than

"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version

posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www.gutenberg.org),

you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a

copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon

request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other

form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,

performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works

unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing

access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided

that

- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from

the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method

you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is

owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he

has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the

Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments

must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you

prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax

returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and

sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the

address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to

the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation."

- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies

you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he

does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm

License. You must require such a user to return or

destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium

and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of

Project Gutenberg-tm works.

- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any

money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the

electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days

of receipt of the work.

- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free

distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm

electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set

forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from

both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael

Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the

Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable

effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread

public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm

collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain

"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or

corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual

property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a

computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by

your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right

of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project

Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project

Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all

liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal

fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT

LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE

PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE

TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE

LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR

INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH

DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a

defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can

receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a

written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you

received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with

your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with

the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a

refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity

providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to

receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy

is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further

opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth

in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER

WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO

WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied

warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.

If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the

law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be

interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by

the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any

provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the

trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone

providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance

with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,

promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,

harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,

that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do

or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm

work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any

Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm

Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of

electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers

including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists

because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from

people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the

assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's

goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will

remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project

Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure

and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.

To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4

and the Foundation web page at http://www.pglaf.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive

Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit

501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the

state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal

Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification

number is 64-6221541. Its 501(c)(3) letter is posted at

http://pglaf.org/fundraising. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent

permitted by U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.

The Foundation's principal office is located at 4557 Melan Dr. S.

Fairbanks, AK, 99712., but its volunteers and employees are scattered

throughout numerous locations. Its business office is located at

809 North 1500 West, Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887, email

business@pglaf.org. Email contact links and up to date contact

information can be found at the Foundation's web site and official

page at http://pglaf.org

For additional contact information:

Dr. Gregory B. Newby

Chief Executive and Director

gbnewby@pglaf.org

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg

Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide

spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of

increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be

freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest

array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations

($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt

status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating

charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United

States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a

considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up

with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations

where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To

SEND DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any

particular state visit http://pglaf.org

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we

have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition

against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who

approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make

any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from

outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation

methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other

ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations.

To donate, please visit: http://pglaf.org/donate

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic

works.

Professor Michael S. Hart is the originator of the Project Gutenberg-tm

concept of a library of electronic works that could be freely shared

with anyone. For thirty years, he produced and distributed Project

Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed

editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the U.S.

unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not necessarily

keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition.

Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility:

http://www.gutenberg.org

This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,

including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary

Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to

subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.