The Three Taverns | Page 3

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ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
This etext was prepared by Alan. R. Light ([email protected]
, formerly
[email protected]
). To assure a high quality text, the
original was typed in (manually) twice and electronically compared.
The Three Taverns
A Book of Poems
By Edwin Arlington
Robinson [American (Maine) Poet. 1869-1935.]
[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are CAPITALIZED. Lines
longer than 78 characters are broken and the continuation is indented
two spaces. Some obvious errors may have been corrected.]
The Three Taverns
A Book of Poems
By Edwin Arlington
Robinson
Author of "The Man Against the Sky", "Merlin, A Poem",
etc.
To THOMAS SERGEANT PERRY and LILLA CABOT PERRY
Contents
The Valley of the Shadow
The Wandering Jew
Neighbors
The
Mill
The Dark Hills
The Three Taverns
Demos I
Demos II

The Flying Dutchman
Tact
On the Way
John Brown
The False
Gods
Archibald's Example
London Bridge
Tasker Norcross
A
Song at Shannon's
Souvenir
Discovery
Firelight
The New
Tenants
Inferential
The Rat
Rahel to Varnhagen
Nimmo

Peace on Earth
Late Summer
An Evangelist's Wife
The Old
King's New Jester
Lazarus
Several poems included in this book appeared originally
in American
periodicals, as follows: The Three Taverns, London Bridge, A Song at
Shannon's, The New Tenants, Discovery, John Brown; Archibald's
Example, The Valley of the Shadow; Nimmo; The Wandering Jew,
Souvenir; Neighbors, Tact; Demos; The Mill, An Evangelist's Wife;

Firelight; Late Summer; Inferential; The Flying Dutchman;
On the
Way, The False Gods; Peace on Earth; The Old King's New Jester.

The Three Taverns

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