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Home  »  Collected Poems by Robinson, Edwin Arlington  »  43. Two Quatrains

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921.

II. The Children of the Night

43. Two Quatrains

I

AS eons of incalculable strife

Are in the vision of one moment caught,

So are the common, concrete things of life

Divinely shadowed on the walls of Thought.

II

WE shriek to live, but no man ever lives

Till he has rid the ghost of human breath;

We dream to die, but no man ever dies

Till he has quit the road that runs to death.