Edwin Arlington Robinson has long been acknowledged by the likes of James Wright, Donald Hall, Donald Justice, John Hollander, Robert Faggen and others to be a sadly under-valued poet. His poetry is remarkable for its integrity to life experience. While the majority of his verse is about the lives of 'ordinary' people, his poem "CREDO" is a spare-expression of his engagement with a life of tragic potential that nonetheless refuses to shut its eyes to the night/darkness in knowledge that the light is coming/come."CREDO"
I cannot find my way: there is no star
In all the shrouded heavens anywhere;
And there is not a whisper in the air
Of any living voice but one so far
That I can hear it only as a bar
Of lost, imperial music, played when fair
And angel fingers wove, and unawares,
Dead leaves to garlands where no roses are.
No, there is not a glimmer , nor a call,
For one that welcomes, welcomes when he fears,
The black and awful chaos of the night;
For through it all - above, beyond it all -
I know the far-sent message of the years,
I feel the coming glory of the Light.
Edwin Arlington Robinson
In this poem (and in his work) he pre-figures both T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost. He is arguably our first Modernist Poet. Of notable interest in "CREDO" is the capitalized 'L' of Light, while the night & black remain in lower case letters - joined with the Biblical & Theological phraseology of "Glory of the Light" & "Glory of the Lord" and the imminent, incarnational and eschatological "coming... of the Light" creates a poem that is grounded in the secularized version of the hiddenness of God as in the eschatological / incarnation or presence of that coming in the here and now - i.e. in the dark, in the night the Light is already present in its coming. Robinson does not blink at the night, though he fears it, he welcomes in fear the night and its chaotic demeanor - though its chaos is already defeated by the law/order of the presence of the "coming" of the Light in its glory. It is the modern person who has no sense of the wondrous miracles of a star that might guide him to the Manager or an answer - the night is "shrouded" - veiled the opposite of unveiled - or revelation. He depends on a tradition-ed sense of knowing that has the character of a message sent from far away through history and through the course of humanity's story. This revelation is time-bound and tied up with human history and the human story and its struggle with the night/dark. The message comes like music, a "bar" of music, faintly heard - joining those past ("dead leaves") to those present ("garlands") who struggle for hope ("where no roses are".) By any standard, this is simply amazing poetry. Read him.
E.A. Robinson, The Poetry of E.A. Robinson. Ed. with Annotation by Robert Mezey (Modern Library, 1999)
E.A. Robinson, Robinson: Poems (Everyman's Pocket Poets). Ed. Scott Donaldson. (Everyman Library, 2007).
Scott Donaldson, Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life. (Columbia University Press, 2006)
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