Children of the Night

Part 1

Produced by A. Light and L. Bowser

THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

1905 printing of the 1897 edition

To the Memory of my Father and Mother

Contents:

The Children of the Night Three Quatrains The World An Old Story Ballade of a Ship Ballade by the Fire Ballade of Broken Flutes Ballade of Dead Friends Her Eyes Two Men Villanelle of Change John Evereldown Luke Havergal The House on the Hill Richard Cory Two Octaves Calvary Dear Friends The Story of the Ashes and the Flame For Some Poems by Matthew Arnold Amaryllis Kosmos Zola The Pity of the Leaves Aaron Stark The Garden Cliff Klingenhagen Charles Carville's Eyes The Dead Village Boston Two Sonnets The Clerks Fleming Helphenstine For a Book by Thomas Hardy Thomas Hood The Miracle Horace to Leuconoe Reuben Bright The Altar The Tavern Sonnet George Crabbe Credo On the Night of a Friend's Wedding Sonnet Verlaine Sonnet Supremacy The Night Before Walt Whitman The Chorus of Old Men in "Aegeus" The Wilderness Octaves Two Quatrains Romance The Torrent L'Envoi

The Children of the Night

For those that never know the light, The darkness is a sullen thing; And they, the Children of the Night, Seem lost in Fortune's winnowing.

But some are strong and some are weak, -- And there's the story. House and home Are shut from countless hearts that seek World-refuge that will never come.

And if there be no other life, And if there be no other chance To weigh their sorrow and their strife Than in the scales of circumstance,

'T were better, ere the sun go down Upon the first day we embark, In life's imbittered sea to drown, Than sail forever in the dark.

But if there be a soul on earth So blinded with its own misuse Of man's revealed, incessant worth, Or worn with anguish, that it views

No light but for a mortal eye, No rest but of a mortal sleep, No God but in a prophet's lie, No faith for "honest doubt" to keep;

If there be nothing, good or bad, But chaos for a soul to trust, -- God counts it for a soul gone mad, And if God be God, He is just.

And if God be God, He is Love; And though the Dawn be still so dim, It shows us we have played enough With creeds that make a fiend of Him.

There is one creed, and only one, That glorifies God's excellence; So cherish, that His will be done, The common creed of common sense.

It is the crimson, not the gray, That charms the twilight of all time; It is the promise of the day That makes the starry sky sublime;

It is the faith within the fear That holds us to the life we curse; -- So let us in ourselves revere The Self which is the Universe!

Let us, the Children of the Night, Put off the cloak that hides the scar! Let us be Children of the Light, And tell the ages what we are!

Three Quatrains

As long as Fame's imperious music rings Will poets mock it with crowned words august; And haggard men will clamber to be kings As long as Glory weighs itself in dust.

Drink to the splendor of the unfulfilled, Nor shudder for the revels that are done: The wines that flushed Lucullus are all spilled, The strings that Nero fingered are all gone.

III

We cannot crown ourselves with everything, Nor can we coax the Fates for us to quarrel: No matter what we are, or what we sing, Time finds a withered leaf in every laurel.

The World

Some are the brothers of all humankind, And own them, whatsoever their estate; And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind With enmity for man's unguarded fate.

For some there is a music all day long Like flutes in Paradise, they are so glad; And there is hell's eternal under-song Of curses and the cries of men gone mad.

Part 2

Some say the Scheme with love stands luminous, Some say 't were better back to chaos hurled; And so 't is what we are that makes for us The measure and the meaning of the world.

An Old Story

Strange that I did not know him then, That friend of mine! I did not even show him then One friendly sign;

But cursed him for the ways he had To make me see My envy of the praise he had For praising me.

I would have rid the earth of him Once, in my pride! . . . I never knew the worth of him Until he died.

Ballade of a Ship

Down by the flash of the restless water The dim White Ship like a white bird lay; Laughing at life and the world they sought her, And out she swung to the silvering bay. Then off they flew on their roystering way, And the keen moon fired the light foam flying Up from the flood where the faint stars play, And the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

'T was a king's fair son with a king's fair daughter, And full three hundred beside, they say, -- Revelling on for the lone, cold slaughter So soon to seize them and hide them for aye; But they danced and they drank and their souls grew gay, Nor ever they knew of a ghoul's eye spying Their splendor a flickering phantom to stray Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

Through the mist of a drunken dream they brought her (This wild white bird) for the sea-fiend's prey: The pitiless reef in his hard clutch caught her, And hurled her down where the dead men stay. A torturing silence of wan dismay -- Shrieks and curses of mad souls dying -- Then down they sank to slumber and sway Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying.

ENVOY

Prince, do you sleep to the sound alway Of the mournful surge and the sea-birds' crying? -- Or does love still shudder and steel still slay, Where the bones of the brave in the wave are lying?

Ballade by the Fire

Slowly I smoke and hug my knee, The while a witless masquerade Of things that only children see Floats in a mist of light and shade: They pass, a flimsy cavalcade, And with a weak, remindful glow, The falling embers break and fade, As one by one the phantoms go.

Then, with a melancholy glee To think where once my fancy strayed, I muse on what the years may be Whose coming tales are all unsaid, Till tongs and shovel, snugly laid Within their shadowed niches, grow By grim degrees to pick and spade, As one by one the phantoms go.

But then, what though the mystic Three Around me ply their merry trade? -- And Charon soon may carry me Across the gloomy Stygian glade? -- Be up, my soul! nor be afraid Of what some unborn year may show; But mind your human debts are paid, As one by one the phantoms go.

ENVOY

Life is the game that must be played: This truth at least, good friend, we know; So live and laugh, nor be dismayed As one by one the phantoms go.

Ballade of Broken Flutes

(To A. T. Schumann.)

In dreams I crossed a barren land, A land of ruin, far away; Around me hung on every hand A deathful stillness of decay; And silent, as in bleak dismay That song should thus forsaken be, On that forgotten ground there lay The broken flutes of Arcady.

The forest that was all so grand When pipes and tabors had their sway Stood leafless now, a ghostly band Of skeletons in cold array. A lonely surge of ancient spray Told of an unforgetful sea, But iron blows had hushed for aye The broken flutes of Arcady.

No more by summer breezes fanned, The place was desolate and gray; But still my dream was to command New life into that shrunken clay. I tried it. Yes, you scan to-day, With uncommiserating glee, The songs of one who strove to play The broken flutes of Arcady.

ENVOY

So, Rock, I join the common fray, To fight where Mammon may decree; And leave, to crumble as they may, The broken flutes of Arcady.

Ballade of Dead Friends

As we the withered ferns By the roadway lying, Time, the jester, spurns All our prayers and prying -- All our tears and sighing, Sorrow, change, and woe -- All our where-and-whying For friends that come and go.

Life awakes and burns, Age and death defying, Till at last it learns All but Love is dying; Love's the trade we're plying, God has willed it so; Shrouds are what we're buying For friends that come and go.

Man forever yearns For the thing that's flying. Everywhere he turns, Men to dust are drying, -- Dust that wanders, eying (With eyes that hardly glow) New faces, dimly spying For friends that come and go.

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