Quotes from Edwin Arlington Robinson

Yes, there is yet one way to where she is, / Bitter, but one that faith may never miss. / Out of the grave I come to tell you this— / To tell you this.

Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.

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

Who knows to-day from yesterday May learn to count no thing too strange: Love builds of what Time takes away, Till Death itself is less than Change.

I am not one Who must have everything, yet I must have My dreams if I must live, for they are mine. Wisdom is not one word and then another, Till words are like dry leaves under a tree; Wisdom is like a dawn that comes up slowly Out of an unknown ocean.

Poet and kings are but the clerks of Time.

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.

Where the Light falls, death falls; And in the darkness comes the Light.

And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, / Went home and put a bullet through his head.

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.

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.

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.

Two kinds of gratitude: The sudden kind we feel for what we take; the larger kind we feel for what we give.

No matter what we are, and what we sing, Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel

Poets and kings are but the clerks of Time, Tiering the same dull webs of discontent, Clipping the same sad alnage of the years.

She knows as well as anyone that pity, having played, soon tires.

Were it not for love, Poor life would be a ship not worth launching.

And thus we all are nighing The truth we fear to know: Death will end our crying For friends that come and go.

Youth sees too far to see how near it is To seeing farther.

Love must have wings to fly away from love And to fly back again.

I have been reading the Old Testament, a most bloodthirsty and perilous book for the young. Jehovah is beyond doubt the worst character in fiction.

For when a woman is left too much alone, sooner or later she begins to think; and no man knows what then she may discover.

And we who delve in beauty's lore Know all that we have known before Of what inexorable cause Makes Time so vicious in his reaping.

Friends: people who borrow my books and set wet glasses on them.