Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869 – 1935)
American poet.
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I shall have more to say when I am dead.
You have made
The cement of your churches out of tears
And ashes, and the fabric will not stand.
We are young
And we are friends of time.
The gods are growing old;
The stars are singing Golden hair to gray
Green leaf to yellow leaf,—or chlorophyl
To xanthophyl, to be more scientific.
Your Dollar is your only Word,
The wrath of it your only fear.
You build it altars tall enough
To make you see, but your are blind;
You cannot leave it long enough
To look before you or behind.
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.
He was himself and he had lost the speed
He started with, and he was left behind.
A thousand golden sheaves were lying there,
Shining and still, but not for long to stay—
As if a thousand girls with golden hair
Might rise from where they slept and go away.
Are we no greater than the noise we make
Along one blind atomic pilgrimage
Whereon by crass chance billeted we go
Because our brains and bones and cartilage
Will have it so?
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