Edwin Arlington Robinson (December 22, 1869 – April 6, 1935) was an American poet, who won three Pulitzer Prizes for his work.

Robinson was born in Tide Head, but his family moved to Gardiner, Maine in 1870. He described his childhood in Maine as "stark and unhappy." His family also had problems with alcohol and his brother Herman died in part due to that. It has been speculated that his poem Richard Cory may relate to his brother. His early difficulties led many of his poems to have a dark pessimism and his stories to deal with "an American dream gone awry."

He left Maine after high school to attend Harvard University. This lasted two years and later he went to New York City to be around other authors. His first volume of poems came out in 1896, but had limited distribution. His second volume, The Children of the Night, was publicly available. He had some financial difficulties as poet, but in 1905 Theodore Roosevelt gave him a job at a Customs Office because he was a fan of Robinson's work. He later quit that job to devote himself to poetry full time. He had literary success after that, but lived a solitary life and never married.

In the fall of 1891, at the age of 21, Edwin entered Harvard as a special student. He took classes on English, French, Shakespeare, and one on Anglo-Saxon that he later dropped. His mission was not to get all A's, as he wrote his friend Harry Smith, "B, and in that vicinity, is a very comfortable and safe place to hang".

After Edwin's first year at Harvard the family endured what they knew was coming. His father Edward had died. He was buried at the top of the street in Oak Grove Cemetery in a plot purchased for the family.

In the fall Edwin returned to Harvard for a second year, but it was to be his last one as a student there. Though short, his stay in Cambridge included some of his most cherished experiences, and it was there that he made his most lasting friendships. He wrote his friend Harry Smith on June 21, 1893:

"I suppose this is the last letter I shall ever write you from Harvard. The thought seems a little queer, but it cannot be otherwise. Sometimes I try to imagine the state my mind would be in had I never come here, but I cannot. I feel that I have got comparatively little from my two years, but still, more than I could get in Gardiner if I lived a century."

Robinson was back in Gardiner by mid-summer, 1893. He had plans to start writing seriously. In October he wrote his friend Gledhill:

"Writing has been my dream ever since I was old enough to lay a plan for an air castle. Now for the first time I seem to have something like a favorable opportunity and this winter I shall make a beginning."

With his father gone, Edwin became the man of the household. He farmed their plot of land, and much to his surprise he liked it. He was often too exhausted to write after a long day's work.

Edwin self-published his first book The Torrent and the Night Before. He paid 100 dollars for 500 copies. It was meant to be a surprise for his mother. Days before the copies arrived, however, Mary Palmer Robinson died of diptheria. She never got to see her son's published poetry. (From wikipedia)

Download Three Books of Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson

PDF format, 419KB, 245Pages.

The Children of the Night, The Three Taverns and The Man against the Sky.

Three Books of Poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson, the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series, Jim Manis, Faculty Editor, Hazleton, PA 18201-1291 is a Portable Document File produced as part of an ongoing student publication project to bring classical works of literature, in English, to free and easy access of those wishing to make use of them.

Copyright © 1999 The Pennsylvania State University

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!

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