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Edwin Arlington Robinson - Hillcrest
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(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)


No sound of any storm that shakes  
Old island walls with older seas  
Comes here where now September makes  
An island in a sea of trees.  
  
Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets  
The roaring of a world remade,  
And all his ruins and regrets;  
  
And if he still remembers here  
Poor fights he may have won or lost,—
If he be ridden with the fear  
Of what some other fight may cost,—  
  
If, eager to confuse too soon,  
What he has known with what may be,  
He reads a planet out of tune
For cause of his jarred harmony,—  
  
If here he venture to unroll  
His index of adagios,  
And he be given to console  
Humanity with what he knows,—
  
He may by contemplation learn  
A little more than what he knew,  
And even see great oaks return  
To acorns out of which they grew.  
  
He may, if he but listen well,
Through twilight and the silence here,  
Be told what there are none may tell  
To vanity’s impatient ear;  
  
And he may never dare again  
Say what awaits him, or be sure
What sunlit labyrinth of pain  
He may not enter and endure.  
  
Who knows to-day from yesterday  
May learn to count no thing too strange:  
Love builds of what Time takes away,
Till Death itself is less than Change.  
  
Who sees enough in his duress  
May go as far as dreams have gone;  
Who sees a little may do less  
Than many who are blind have done;
  
Who sees unchastened here the soul  
Triumphant has no other sight  
Than has a child who sees the whole  
World radiant with his own delight.  
  
Far journeys and hard wandering
Await him in whose crude surmise  
Peace, like a mask, hides everything  
That is and has been from his eyes;  
  
And all his wisdom is unfound,  
Or like a web that error weaves
On airy looms that have a sound  
No louder now than falling leaves.
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