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A continuing selection of classic and contemporary poems.

The World

Edwin Arlington Robinson

Some are the brothers of all humankind,
 And own them, whatsoever their estate;
And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind
 With enmity for man’s unguarded fate.

For some there is a music all day long
 Like flutes in Paradise, they are so glad;
And there is hell’s eternal under-song
 Of curses and the cries of men gone mad.

Some say the Scheme with love stands luminous,
 Some say ‘t were better back to chaos hurled;
And so ‘t is what we are that makes for us
 The measure and the meaning of the world.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Children of the Night | 1897
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