User:The Man against the Sky

He may have had for evil or for good

No argument; he may have had no care

For what without himself went anywhere

To failure or to glory, and least of all

For such a stale, flamboyant miracle;

He may have been the prophet of an art

Immovable to old idolatries;

He may have been a player without a part,

Annoyed that even the sun should have the skies

For such a flaming way to advertise;

He may have been a painter sick at heart

With Nature’s toiling for a new surprise;

He may have been a cynic, who now, for all

Of anything divine that his effete

Negation may have tasted,

Saw truth in his own image, rather small,

Forbore to fever the ephemeral,

Found any barren height a good retreat

From any swarming street,

And in the sun saw power superbly wasted;

And when the primitive old-fashioned stars

Came out again to shine on joys and wars

More primitive, and all arrayed for doom,

He may have proved a world a sorry thing

In his imagining,

And life a lighted highway to the tomb.

— Edwin Arlington Robinson from The Man Against The Sky