Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) received the first-ever Pulitzer Prize in poetry, for his Collected Poems in 1921. Fame is fleeting, but even in his own lifetime Robinson was something of an oddball: solitary (despite his friendship with Teddy Roosevelt), often poor, dedicated to unfashionably traditional rhymed and metered forms when his contemporaries were embracing free verse as the American poetic idiom. We know him as the poet of struggle and failure, whose personae, in poem after poem, possess a singular genius for self-destruction. Take, for example, Eben Flood, whose very name suggests a tide gone out and whose homecoming party is a party of one. Robinson’s rhymed pentameter octets sketch his scene, a drunkard offering himself another drink by the light of the moon. The town below, holding “as much as he should ever know / On earth again of home,” sleeps on, all its doors locked to Eben, who in “times long past,” as his drinking song proclaims, had found it full of friends. Now, although he keeps company bravely enough with the moon and himself and his jug, his one companion in the end, as in the psalm, is darkness. Mr. Flood’s Party by Edwin Arlington Robinson Old Eben Flood, climbing alone one night Over the hill between the town below And the forsaken upland hermitage That held as much as he should ever know On earth again of home, paused warily. The road was his with not a native near; And Eben, having leisure, said aloud, For no man else in Tilbury Town to hear: “Well, Mr. Flood, we have the harvest moon Again, and we may not have many more; The bird is on the wing, the poet says, And you and I have said it here before. Drink to the bird.” He raised up to the light The jug that he had gone so far to fill, And answered huskily: “Well, Mr. Flood, Since you propose it, I believe I will.” Alone, as if enduring to the end A valiant armor of scarred hopes outworn, He stood there in the middle of the road Like Roland’s ghost winding a silent horn. Below him, in the town among the trees, Where friends of other days had honored him, A phantom salutation of the dead Rang thinly till old Eben’s eyes were dim. Then, as a mother lays her sleeping child Down tenderly, fearing it may awake, He set the jug down slowly at his feet With trembling care, knowing that most things break; And only when assured that on firm earth It stood, as the uncertain lives of men Assuredly did not, he paced away, And with his hand extended paused again: “Well, Mr. Flood, we have not met like this In a long time; and many a change has come To both of us, I fear, since last it was We had a drop together. Welcome home!” Convivially returning with himself, Again he raised the jug up to the light; And with an acquiescent quaver said: “Well, Mr. Flood, if you insist, I might. “Only a very little, Mr. Flood — For auld lang syne. No more, sir; that will do.” So, for the time, apparently it did, And Eben evidently thought so too; For soon amid the silver loneliness Of night he lifted up his voice and sang, Secure, with only two moons listening, Until the whole harmonious landscape rang — “For auld lang syne.” The weary throat gave out, The last word wavered; and the song being done, He raised again the jug regretfully And shook his head, and was again alone. There was not much that was ahead of him, And there was nothing in the town below — Where strangers would have shut the many doors That many friends had opened long ago. ___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.
