Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921.

II. The Children of the Night

32. Sonnet

OH for a poet—for a beacon bright

To rift this changless glimmer of dead gray;

To spirit back the Muses, long astray,

And flush Parnassus with a newer light;

To put these little sonnet-men to flight

Who fashion, in a shrewd mechanic way,

Songs without souls, that flicker for a day,

To vanish in irrevocable night.

What does it mean, this barren age of ours?

Here are the men, the women, and the flowers,

The seasons, and the sunset, as before.

What does it mean? Shall there not one arise

To wrench one banner from the western skies,

And mark it with his name forevermore?