



Produced by A. Light and L. Bowser





THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

[Maine Poet -- 1869-1935.]

1905 printing of the 1897 edition




[Note on text:  Italicized stanzas have been indented 5 spaces.
Italicized words or phrases have been capitalized.
Lines longer than 77 characters have been broken according to metre,
and the continuation is indented two spaces.  Also,
some obvious errors have been corrected.]



     To the Memory of my Father and Mother


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
     Romance
     The Torrent
     L'Envoi




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