Collected Poems (Robinson)/Hillcrest

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

For other versions of this work, see Hillcrest.

HILLCREST

(To Mrs. Edward MacDowell)

No sound of any storm that shakesOld island walls with older seasComes here where now September makesAn island in a sea of trees.

Between the sunlight and the shade
A man may learn till he forgets
The roaring of a world remade,
And all his ruins and regrets;

And if he still remembers here
Poor fights he may have won or lost,—
If he be ridden with the fear
Of what some other fight may cost,—

If, eager to confuse too soon,
What he has known with what may be,
He reads a planet out of tune
For cause of his jarred harmony,—

If here he venture to unroll
His index of adagios,
And he be given to console
Humanity with what he knows,—

He may by contemplation learn
A little more than what he knew,
And even see great oaks return
To acorns out of which they grew.

He may, if he but listen well,
Through twilight and the silence here,
Be told what there are none may tell
To vanity's impatient ear;

And he may never dare again
Say what awaits him, or be sure
What sunlit labyrinth of pain
He may not enter and endure.

Who knows to-day from yesterdayMay learn to count no thing too strange:Love builds of what Time takes away,Till Death itself is less than Change.

Who sees enough in his duressMay go as far as dreams have gone;Who sees a little may do lessThan many who are blind have done;

Who sees unchastened here the soulTriumphant has no other sightThan has a child who sees the wholeWorld radiant with his own delight.

Far journeys and hard wanderingAwait him in whose crude surmisePeace, like a mask, hides everythingThat is and has been from his eyes;

And all his wisdom is unfound,Or like a web that error weavesOn airy looms that have a soundNo louder now than falling leaves.