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The
Children of the Night
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
[1869-1935, (Maine) Poet]
[First published in 1897, this version is based
on a 1905 Reprinting.]
For those that never know the
light,
The darkness is a sullen thing;
And they, the Children of the
Night,
Seem lost in Fortune's
winnowing.
But some are strong and some are
weak, --
And there's the story. House and
home
Are shut from countless hearts
that seek
World-refuge that will never
come.
And if there be no other life,
And if there be no other chance
To weigh their sorrow and their
strife
Than in the scales of
circumstance,
'T were better, ere the sun go
down
Upon the first day we embark,
In life's imbittered sea to
drown,
Than sail forever in the dark.
But if there be a soul on earth
So blinded with its own misuse
Of man's revealed, incessant
worth,
Or worn with anguish, that it
views
No light but for a mortal eye,
No rest but of a mortal sleep,
No God but in a prophet's lie,
No faith for "honest
doubt" to keep;
If there be nothing, good or
bad,
But chaos for a soul to trust,
--
God counts it for a soul gone
mad,
And if God be God, He is just.
And if God be God, He is Love;
And though the Dawn be still so
dim,
It shows us we have played
enough
With creeds that make a fiend of
Him.
There is one creed, and only
one,
That glorifies God's excellence;
So cherish, that His will be
done,
The common creed of common
sense.
It is the crimson, not the gray,
That charms the twilight of all
time;
It is the promise of the day
That makes the starry sky
sublime;
It is the faith within the fear
That holds us to the life we
curse; --
So let us in ourselves revere
The Self which is the Universe!
Let us, the Children of the
Night,
Put off the cloak that hides the scar!
Let us be Children of the Light,
And tell the ages what we are!
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