Tag Archives: Sunday Poems

A Poem for Sunday

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I’m not giving up on this yet, despite fairly direct feedback from La that perhaps I should… Stubborn, I guess…  And anyway, what could be better than some poetry to combat the Sunday blues?  Not much that’s legal, I say.

At any rate, today’s unwanted poem comes from Edwin Arlington Robinson, an American poet who Wikipedia informs me won the Pulitzer prize three times in the 1920’s.  I don’t know much about the guy, but I read the below poem during English Lit class my sophomore year in high school, and it has stuck with me ever since.  I think it’s because, to me, it represents such a simple and understandable tragedy — that of time leaving you behind.  Sad, maybe, that I have always seemed to identify with a drunk old man stumbling around on a hillside, but, there you go…  I hope that you will find something within it that resonates as well.

— Bridget

Mr. Flood’s Party

Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night
Over the hill between the town below
And the forsaken upland hermitage
That held as much as he should ever know
On earth again of home, paused warily.
The road was his with not a native near;
And Eben, having leisure, said aloud,
For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear:
 
“Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon
Again, and we may not have many more;
The bird is on the wing, the poet says,
And you and I have said it here before.
Drink to the bird.” He raised up to the light
The jug that he had gone so far to fill,
And answered huskily: “Well, Mr. Flood,
Since you propose it, I believe I will.”
 
Alone, as if enduring to the end
A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn,
He stood there in the middle of the road
Like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn.
Below him, in the town among the trees,
Where friends of other days had honored him,
A phantom salutation of the dead
Rang thinly till old Eben’s eyes were dim.
 
Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child
Down tenderly, fearing it may awake,
He set the jug down slowly at his feet
With trembling care, knowing that most things break;
And only when assured that on firm earth
It stood, as the uncertain lives of men
Assuredly did not, he paced away,
And with his hand extended paused again:
 
“Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this
In a long time; and many a change has come
To both of us, I fear, since last it was
We had a drop together. Welcome home!”
Convivially returning with himself,
Again he raised the jug up to the light;
And with an acquiescent quaver said:
“Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might.
 
“Only a very little, Mr. Flood—
For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.”
So, for the time, apparently it did,
And Eben evidently thought so too;
For soon amid the silver loneliness
Of night he lifted up his voice and sang,
Secure, with only two moons listening,
Until the whole harmonious landscape rang—
 
“For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out,
The last word wavered; and the song being done,
He raised again the jug regretfully
And shook his head, and was again alone.
There was not much that was ahead of him,
And there was nothing in the town below—
Where strangers would have shut the many doors
That many friends had opened long ago.
 
— Edwin Arlington Robinson

A Poem for Sunday

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On Seeing The Elgin Marbles For The First Time

 
My spirit is too weak—mortality
   Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
   And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
   Yet ’tis a gentle luxury to weep
   That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
Fresh for the opening of the morning’s eye.
Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
   Bring round the heart an indescribable feud;
So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
   That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
Wasting of old time—with a billowy main—
   A sun—a shadow of a magnitude.
 
— John Keats

A Poem for Sunday

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No Road

Since we agreed to let the road between us

Fall to disuse,

And bricked our gates up, planted trees to screen us,

And turned all time’s eroding agents loose,

Silence, and space, and strangers – our neglect

Has not had much effect.

Leaves drift unswept, perhaps; grass creeps unmown;

No other change.

So clear it stands, so little overgrown,

Walking that way tonight would not seem strange,

And still would be allowed. A little longer,

And time will be the stronger,

Drafting a world where no such road will run

From you to me;

To watch that world come up like a cold sun,

Rewarding others, is my liberty.

Not to prevent it is my will’s fulfilment.

Willing it, my ailment.

— Philip Larkin