(_In Springfield, Illinois_)
It is portentous, and a thing of state
That here at midnight, in our little town
A mourning figure walks, and will not rest,
Near the old court-house pacing up and down,
Or by his homestead, or in shadowed yards
He lingers where his children used to play,
Or through the market, on the well-worn stones
He stalks until the dawn-stars burn away.
A bronzed, lank man! His suit of ancient black,
A famous high top-hat and plain worn shawl
Make him the quaint great figure that men love,
The prairie-lawyer, master of us all.
He cannot sleep upon his hillside now.
He is among us;—as in times before!
And we who toss and lie awake for long,
Breathe deep, and start, to see him pass the door.
His head is bowed. He thinks of men and kings.
Yea, when the sick world cries, how can he sleep?
Too many peasants fight, they know not why;
Too many homesteads in black terror weep.
The sins of all the war-lords burn his heart.
He sees the dreadnaughts scouring every main.
He carries on his shawl-wrapped shoulders now
The bitterness, the folly and the pain.
He cannot rest until a spirit-dawn
Shall come;—the shining hope of Europe free:
A league of sober folk, the Workers’ Earth,
Bringing long peace to Cornland, Alp and Sea.
It breaks his heart that kings must murder still,
That all his hours of travail here for men
Seem yet in vain. And who will bring white peace
That he may sleep upon his hill again?
_Edwin Meade Robinson_
Edwin Meade Robinson (no relation to Edwin Arlington Robinson) was
born November 1, 1879, at Lima, Indiana. He engaged in newspaper
work when he was scarcely out of his ’teens, joining the staff of
the Indianapolis _Sentinel_ in 1901. He began writing a daily poem
in 1904 and, for years, has conducted a column of prose and verse in
the Cleveland _Plain Dealer_.
_Mere Melodies_ (1918) is a collection of Robinson’s light and
sentimental verse, an uneven collection. _Piping and Panning_ (1920)
is a much fresher and far more vigorous assembling of this
versifier’s humorous and burlesque idioms. One of our most adroit
technicians, he is especially happy in interior rhyming; a poem like
“Halcyon Days” contains, beside the end-rhymes, rhymes hidden within
the lines and others running over from line to line.