Why He Was There

• Much as he left it when he went from us
• Here was the room again where he had been
• So long that something of him should be seen,
• Or felt — and so it was. Incredulous,
• I turned about, loath to be greeted thus,
• And there he was in his old chair, serene
• As ever, and as laconic and as lean
• As when he lived, and as cadaverous.
• Calm as he was of old when we were young,
• He sat there gazing at the pallid flame
• Before him. “And how far will this go on?”
• I thought. He felt the failure of my tongue,
• And smiled: “I was not here until you came;
• And I shall not be here when you are gone.”

Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935) grew up in Gardiner, Maine. One of his two brothers died of a drug overdose and the other married the young woman Edwin was in love with. That brother died as an impoverished alcoholic, estranged from his family. Edwin spent two years at Harvard and then moved to New York. Among his admirers as his reputation grew was president Theodore Roosevelt, who secured a position for him at the New York Customs House. Well loved during his lifetime, Robinson’s reputation has not diminished and he is often considered the first of the great modernist poets of America: despite the fact that he tended to write in traditional forms, his diction and sensibility are clearly that of our own contemporary language and time. This poem is a traditional Italian sonnet but its diction and phrasing are altogether contemporary and altogether masterful. Robinson, who won the Pulitzer Prize three times in the 1920s, never married.