The Three Taverns | Page 3

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The Three Taverns?A Book of Poems?By Edwin Arlington Robinson [American (Maine) Poet. 1869-1935.]
[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.]
The Three Taverns?A Book of Poems?By Edwin Arlington Robinson?Author of "The Man Against the Sky", "Merlin, A Poem", etc.
To THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY and LILLA CABOT PERRY
Contents
The Valley of the Shadow?The Wandering Jew?Neighbors?The Mill?The Dark Hills?The Three Taverns?Demos I?Demos II?The Flying Dutchman?Tact?On the Way?John Brown?The False Gods?Archibald's Example?London Bridge?Tasker Norcross?A Song at Shannon's?Souvenir?Discovery?Firelight?The New Tenants?Inferential?The Rat?Rahel to Varnhagen?Nimmo?Peace on Earth?Late Summer?An Evangelist's Wife?The Old King's New Jester?Lazarus
Several poems included in this book appeared originally?in American periodicals, as follows: The Three Taverns, London Bridge, A Song at Shannon's, The New Tenants, Discovery, John Brown; Archibald's Example, The Valley of the Shadow; Nimmo; The Wandering Jew, Souvenir; Neighbors, Tact; Demos; The Mill, An Evangelist's Wife; Firelight; Late Summer; Inferential; The Flying Dutchman;?On the Way, The False Gods; Peace on Earth; The Old King's New Jester.

The Three Taverns

The Valley of the Shadow
There were faces to remember in the Valley of the Shadow,?There were faces unregarded, there were faces to forget;?There were fires of grief and fear that are a few forgotten ashes, There were sparks of recognition that are not forgotten yet. For at first, with an amazed and overwhelming indignation?At a measureless malfeasance that obscurely willed it thus, They were lost and unacquainted -- till they found themselves in others, Who had groped as they were groping where dim ways were perilous.
There were lives that were as dark as are the fears and intuitions Of a child who knows himself and is alone with what he knows; There were pensioners of dreams and there were debtors of illusions, All to fail before the triumph of a weed that only grows.?There were thirsting heirs of golden sieves that held not wine or water, And had no names in traffic or more value there than toys:?There were blighted sons of wonder in the Valley of the Shadow, Where they suffered and still wondered why their wonder made no noise.
There were slaves who dragged the shackles of a precedent unbroken, Demonstrating the fulfilment of unalterable schemes,?Which had been, before the cradle, Time's inexorable tenants Of what were now the dusty ruins of their father's dreams.?There were these, and there were many who had stumbled up to manhood, Where they saw too late the road they should have taken long ago: There were thwarted clerks and fiddlers in the Valley of the Shadow, The commemorative wreckage of what others did not know.
And there were daughters older than the mothers who had borne them, Being older in their wisdom, which is older than the earth; And they were going forward only farther into darkness,?Unrelieved as were the blasting obligations of their birth; And among them, giving always what was not for their possession, There were maidens, very quiet, with no quiet in their eyes: There were daughters of the silence in the Valley of the Shadow, Each an isolated item in the family sacrifice.
There were creepers among catacombs where dull regrets were torches, Giving light enough to show them what was there upon the shelves -- Where there was more for them to see than pleasure would remember Of something that had been alive and once had been themselves. There were some who stirred the ruins with a solid imprecation, While as many fled repentance for the promise of despair:?There were drinkers of wrong waters in the Valley of the Shadow, And all the sparkling ways were dust that once had led them there.
There were some who knew the steps of Age incredibly beside them, And his fingers upon shoulders that had never felt the wheel; And their last of empty trophies was a gilded cup of nothing, Which a contemplating vagabond would not have come to steal. Long and often had they figured for a larger valuation,?But the size of their addition was the balance of a doubt:?There were gentlemen of leisure in the Valley of the Shadow, Not allured by retrospection, disenchanted, and played out.
And among the dark endurances of unavowed reprisals?There were silent eyes of envy that saw little but saw well; And over beauty's aftermath of hazardous ambitions?There were tears for what had vanished as they vanished where they fell. Not assured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless, There were some whose only passion was for Time who made