 | Uncollected poems and prose of Edwin Arlington Robinson |  |
BROADWAY
By night a gay leviathan
That fades before the sun—
A monster with a million eyes
Without the sight of one—
A coruscating thing with claws
To tear the soul apart—
Breaker of men and avenues,
It throbs, and has no heart.
That fades before the sun—
A monster with a million eyes
Without the sight of one—
A coruscating thing with claws
To tear the soul apart—
Breaker of men and avenues,
It throbs, and has no heart.
By day it has another life
That feeds on hopes and dreams;
And wears, to cover what it is,
The mask of what it seems.
But soon its iridescent length
Will make a fiery show,
To cheer, to dazzle, or to scorch
The wingless moths below.
That feeds on hopes and dreams;
And wears, to cover what it is,
The mask of what it seems.
But soon its iridescent length
Will make a fiery show,
To cheer, to dazzle, or to scorch
The wingless moths below.
And if, at cynic intervals,
And like a thing in pain,
By chance it implicates itself
With something not insane,
It will not often, nor for long,
Relinquish what allures
With everything that has the shine
Of nothing that endures.
And like a thing in pain,
51
With something not insane,
It will not often, nor for long,
Relinquish what allures
With everything that has the shine
Of nothing that endures.
| Uncollected poems and prose of Edwin Arlington Robinson | |