The Three Taverns Part 1

The Three Taverns.

by Edwin Arlington Robinson.

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 a.s.sured of what was theirs, and always hungry for the nameless, There were some whose only pa.s.sion was for Time who made them cold: There were numerous fair women in the Valley of the Shadow, Dreaming rather less of heaven than of h.e.l.l when they were old.

Now and then, as if to scorn the common touch of common sorrow, There were some who gave a few the distant pity of a smile; And another cloaked a soul as with an ash of human embers, Having covered thus a treasure that would last him for a while.

There were many by the presence of the many disaffected, Whose exemption was included in the weight that others bore: There were seekers after darkness in the Valley of the Shadow, And they alone were there to find what they were looking for.

So they were, and so they are; and as they came are coming others, And among them are the fearless and the meek and the unborn; And a question that has held us heretofore without an answer May abide without an answer until all have ceased to mourn.

For the children of the dark are more to name than are the wretched, Or the broken, or the weary, or the baffled, or the shamed: There are builders of new mansions in the Valley of the Shadow, And among them are the dying and the blinded and the maimed.

The Wandering Jew

I saw by looking in his eyes That they remembered everything; And this was how I came to know That he was here, still wandering.

For though the figure and the scene Were never to be reconciled, I knew the man as I had known His image when I was a child.

With evidence at every turn, I should have held it safe to guess That all the newness of New York Had nothing new in loneliness; Yet here was one who might be Noah, Or Nathan, or Abimelech, Or Lamech, out of ages lost, -- Or, more than all, Melchizedek.

a.s.sured that he was none of these, I gave them back their names again, To scan once more those endless eyes Where all my questions ended then.

I found in them what they revealed That I shall not live to forget, And wondered if they found in mine Compa.s.sion that I might regret.

Pity, I learned, was not the least Of time's offending benefits That had now for so long impugned The conservation of his wits: Rather it was that I should yield, Alone, the fealty that presents The tribute of a tempered ear To an untempered eloquence.

Before I pondered long enough On whence he came and who he was, I trembled at his ringing wealth Of manifold anathemas; I wondered, while he seared the world, What new defection ailed the race, And if it mattered how remote Our fathers were from such a place.

Before there was an hour for me To contemplate with less concern The crumbling realm awaiting us Than his that was beyond return, A dawning on the dust of years Had shaped with an elusive light Mirages of remembered scenes That were no longer for the sight.

For now the gloom that hid the man Became a daylight on his wrath, And one wherein my fancy viewed New lions ramping in his path.

The old were dead and had no fangs, Wherefore he loved them -- seeing not They were the same that in their time Had eaten everything they caught.

The world around him was a gift Of anguish to his eyes and ears, And one that he had long reviled As fit for devils, not for seers.

Where, then, was there a place for him That on this other side of death Saw nothing good, as he had seen No good come out of Nazareth?

Yet here there was a reticence, And I believe his only one, That hushed him as if he beheld A Presence that would not be gone.

In such a silence he confessed How much there was to be denied; And he would look at me and live, As others might have looked and died.

As if at last he knew again That he had always known, his eyes Were like to those of one who gazed On those of One who never dies.

For such a moment he revealed What life has in it to be lost; And I could ask if what I saw, Before me there, was man or ghost.

He may have died so many times That all there was of him to see Was pride, that kept itself alive As too rebellious to be free; He may have told, when more than once Humility seemed imminent, How many a lonely time in vain The Second Coming came and went.

Whether he still defies or not The failure of an angry task That relegates him out of time To chaos, I can only ask.

But as I knew him, so he was; And somewhere among men to-day Those old, unyielding eyes may flash, And flinch -- and look the other way.

Neighbors

As often as we thought of her, We thought of a gray life That made a quaint economist Of a wolf-haunted wife; We made the best of all she bore That was not ours to bear, And honored her for wearing things That were not things to wear.

There was a distance in her look That made us look again; And if she smiled, we might believe That we had looked in vain.

Rarely she came inside our doors, And had not long to stay; And when she left, it seemed somehow That she was far away.

At last, when we had all forgot That all is here to change, A shadow on the commonplace Was for a moment strange.

Yet there was nothing for surprise, Nor much that need be told: Love, with his gift of pain, had given More than one heart could hold.

The Mill

The miller's wife had waited long, The tea was cold, the fire was dead; And there might yet be nothing wrong In how he went and what he said: "There are no millers any more,"

Was all that she had heard him say; And he had lingered at the door So long that it seemed yesterday.

Sick with a fear that had no form She knew that she was there at last; And in the mill there was a warm And mealy fragrance of the past.

What else there was would only seem To say again what he had meant; And what was hanging from a beam Would not have heeded where she went.