Selections from Edwin Arlington Robinson

"Eros Turanos"
...Meanwhile we do no harm; for they
That with a god have striven,
Not hearing much of what we say,
Take what the god hath given;
Though like waves breaking it may be
Or like a changed familiar tree
Or like a stairway to the sea
Where down the blind are driven."

"Ballad by the fire" -- Envoy
Life is a game that must be played
This truth at least, good friends, we know;
So live and laugh, nor be dismayed
As one by one the phantoms go

"Sonnet"

OH for a poet — for a beacon bright
To rift this changeless glimmer of dead gray;
To spirit back the Muses, long astray,
And flush Parnassus with a newer light;
To put these little sonnet-men to flight
Who fashion, in a shrewd, mechanic way,
Songs without souls, that flicker for a day,
To vanish in irrevocable night.

What does it mean, this barren age of ours?
Here are the men, the women, and the flowers,
The seasons, and the sunset, as before.
What does it mean? Shall not one bard arise
To wrench one banner from the western skies,
And mark it with his name forevermore?