Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE WILDERNESS, by EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON


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THE WILDERNESS, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Come away! Come away! There's a frost along
Last Line: And the long fall wind on the lake.


Come away! come away! there's a frost along the marshes,
And a frozen wind that skims the shoal where it shakes the
dead black water;
There's a moan across the lowland and a wailing through the woodland
Of a dirge that sings to send us back to the arms of those
that love us.
There is nothing left but ashes now where the crimson chills of autumn
Put off the summer's languor with a touch that made us glad
For the glory that is gone from us, with a flight we cannot follow,
To the slopes of other valleys and the sounds of other shores.

Come away! come away! you can hear them calling, calling,
Calling us to come to them, and roam no more.
Over there beyond the ridges and the land that lies between us,
There's an old song calling us to come!

Come away! come away! -- for the scenes we leave behind us
Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that's young forever;
And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind,
That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains.
The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for
men before us,
And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten
thousand years;
But this will end our wander-time, for we know the joy that waits us
In the strangeness of home-coming, and a woman's waiting eyes.

Come away! come away! there is nothing now to cheer us --
Nothing now to comfort us, but love's road home: --
Over there beyond the darkness there's a window gleams to greet us,
And a wam hearth waits for us within.

Come away! come away! -- or the roving-fiend will hold us,
And make us all to dwell with him to the end of human faring:
There are no men yet may leave him when his hands are clutched

There are none will own his enmity, there are none will
call him brother.
So we'll be up and on the way, and the less we boast the better
For the freedom that God gave us and the dread we do not know: --
The frost that skips the willow-leaf will again be back to blight it,
And the doom we cannot fly from is the doom we do not see.

Come away! come away! there are dead men all around us --
Frozen men that mock us with a wild, hard laugh
That shrieks and sinks and whimpers in the shrill November rushes,
And the long fall wind on the lake.






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