ROBINSON SAMPLER

MINIVER CHEEVY

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,

Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;

He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old

When swords were bright and steeds were prancing; The vision of a warrior bold

Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,

And dreamed, and rested from his labors,

He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown

That made so many a name so fragrant;

He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,

Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly

Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace

And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the medieval grace

Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,

But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,

And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,

Scratched his head and kept on thinking;

Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.

NEW ENGLAND

Here where the wind is always north-north-east

And children learn to walk on frozen toes,

Wonder begets an envy of all those

Who boil elsewhere with such a lyric yeast

Of love that you will hear them at a feast

Where demons would appeal for some repose,

Still clamoring where the chalice overflows

And crying wildest who have drunk the least.

Passion is here a soilure of the wits,

We're told, and Love a cross for them to bear;

Joy shivers in the corner where she knits And Conscience always has the rocking-chair,

Cheerful as when she tortured into fits

The first cat that was ever killed by Care.

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.

From Collected Poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson, Macmillan (1937).

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