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    The Man Against the Sky
    The Man Against the Sky
    The Man Against the Sky
    Ebook117 pages1 hour

    The Man Against the Sky

    By Edwin Arlington Robinson

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJan 1, 2004
    Author

    Edwin Arlington Robinson

    The American poet Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in 1869 in the Maine village of Head Tide and spent his school days in nearby Gardiner. Robinson developed a love of poetry in his youth, a love that endured until his death in New York in 1935. Robinson attended Harvard during 1891-1893 and published some of his early poetry in The Harvard Advocate. Although committed to becoming a writer, his path would not be an easy one. Income from Robinson's chosen pursuit was insufficient to maintain his modest lifestyle, much less meet his various responsibilities, and he worked at times as a secretary, a time-keeper, and a customs clerk, all the while continuing to write. After years of relative obscurity, he secured some incremental recognition with the publication of his poetry collections The Children of the Night, The Town Down the River, and The Man Against the Sky. During the First World War and in the decade that followed, Robinson composed a cycle of epic narrative poems, written in blank verse, that were modern in style but drew upon classic themes in substance. Against the unfolding tragedy of a world at war, Robinson composed a trilogy based on the legends of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table. The trilogy included Merlin (1917), Lancelot (1920), and Tristram (1927). During the same period, Edwin Arlington Robinson would win the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry twice; first for his Collected Poems (published in 1921), and again for The Man Who Died Twice (published in 1924). With Tristram, he would at last reap hard-won financial rewards for his literary labors. Edwin Arlington Robinson's Arthurian cycle reflects the poet's most mature work.

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      Book preview

      The Man Against the Sky - Edwin Arlington Robinson

      Project Gutenberg's The Man Against the Sky, 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 Man Against the Sky

      Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson

      Release Date: August 5, 2008 [EBook #1035]

      Last Updated: February 7, 2013

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY ***

      Produced by Alan R. Light, and Gary M. Johnson

      THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY

      A Book of Poems

      by Edwin Arlington Robinson

                     To

                     the memory of

                     WILLIAM EDWARD BUTLER

      [Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized. Lines longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]

      Several of the poems included in this book are reprinted from American periodicals, as follows: The Gift of God, Old King Cole, Another Dark Lady, and The Unforgiven; Flammonde and The Poor Relation; The Clinging Vine; Eros Turannos and Bokardo; The Voice of Age; Cassandra; The Burning Book; Theophilus; Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford.

      CONTENTS

      THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY

      Flammonde

      The Gift of God

      The Clinging Vine

      Cassandra

      John Gorham

      Stafford's Cabin

      Hillcrest

      Old King Cole

      Ben Jonson Entertains a Man from Stratford

      Eros Turannos

      Old Trails

      The Unforgiven

      Theophilus

      Veteran Sirens

      Siege Perilous

      Another Dark Lady

      The Voice of Age

      The Dark House

      The Poor Relation

      The Burning Book

      Fragment

      Lisette and Eileen

      Llewellyn and the Tree

      Bewick Finzer

      Bokardo

      The Man against the Sky

      Notes on the etext:

      About the author: Edwin Arlington Robinson, 1869-1935.

      THE MAN AGAINST THE SKY

      Flammonde

           The man Flammonde, from God knows where,

           With firm address and foreign air,

           With news of nations in his talk

           And something royal in his walk,

           With glint of iron in his eyes,

           But never doubt, nor yet surprise,

           Appeared, and stayed, and held his head

           As one by kings accredited.

           Erect, with his alert repose

           About him, and about his clothes,

           He pictured all tradition hears

           Of what we owe to fifty years.

           His cleansing heritage of taste

           Paraded neither want nor waste;

           And what he needed for his fee

           To live, he borrowed graciously.

           He never told us what he was,

           Or what mischance, or other cause,

           Had banished him from better days

           To play the Prince of Castaways.

           Meanwhile he played surpassing well

           A part, for most, unplayable;

           In fine, one pauses, half afraid

           To say for certain that he played.

           For that, one may as well forego

           Conviction as to yes or no;

           Nor can I say just how intense

           Would then have been the difference

           To several, who, having striven

           In vain to get what he was given,

           Would see the stranger taken on

           By friends not easy to be won.

           Moreover, many a malcontent

           He soothed and found munificent;

           His courtesy beguiled and foiled

           Suspicion that his years were soiled;

           His mien distinguished any crowd,

           His credit strengthened when he bowed;

           And women, young and old, were fond

           Of looking at the man Flammonde.

           There was a woman in our town

           On whom the fashion was to frown;

           But while our talk renewed the tinge

           Of a long-faded scarlet fringe,

           The man Flammonde saw none of that,

           And what he saw we wondered at—

           That none of us, in her distress,

           Could hide or find our littleness.

           There was a boy that all agreed

           Had shut within him the rare seed

           Of learning.  We could understand,

           But none of us could lift a hand.

           The man Flammonde appraised the youth,

           And told a few of us the truth;

           And thereby, for a little gold,

           A flowered future was unrolled.

           There were two citizens who fought

           For years and years, and over nought;

           They made life awkward for their friends,

           And shortened their own dividends.

           The man Flammonde said what was wrong

           Should be made right; nor was it long

           Before they were again in line,

           And had each other in to dine.

           And these I mention are but four

           Of many out of many more.

           So much for them.  But what of him—

           So firm in every look and limb?

           What small satanic sort of kink

           Was in his brain?  What broken link

           Withheld him from the destinies

           That came so near to being his?

           What was he, when we came to sift

           His meaning, and to note the drift

           Of incommunicable ways

           That make us ponder while we praise?

           Why was it that his charm revealed

           Somehow the surface of a shield?

           What was it that we never caught?

           What was he, and what was he not?

           How much it was of him we met

           We cannot ever know; nor yet

           Shall all he gave us quite atone

           For what was his, and his alone;

           Nor need we now, since he knew best,

           Nourish an ethical unrest:

           Rarely at once will nature give

           The power to be Flammonde and live.

           We cannot know how much we learn

           From those who never will return,

           Until a flash of unforeseen

           Remembrance falls on what has been.

           We've each a darkening hill to climb;

           And this is why, from time to time

           In Tilbury Town, we look beyond

           Horizons for the man Flammonde.

      The Gift of God

           Blessed with a

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