The town down the river : $b A book of poems

by Edwin Arlington Robinson

"The town down the river : A book of poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson" is a collection of poetry written in the early 20th century. The book contemplates ambition, failure, memory, modern life, and moral character, often through portraits of individuals confronting time, loss, and the pressures of society. The collection opens with a grave homage to Lincoln in The Master and a choric meditation on youth and fate in The Town Down the River, then ranges widely through dramatic monologues and character sketches. An Island voices Napoleon’s bitter exile; the Calverly’s sequence (Leffingwell, Clavering, Lingard) charts bohemian striving and collapse; and the miscellaneous poems move from urban spectacle (The White Lights) to intimate elegy (For a Dead Lady), satire and self-delusion (Miniver Cheevy, Doctor of Billiards), moral quandary (How Annandale Went Out), and parables of procrastination and hope (Vickery’s Mountain, Two Gardens in Linndale). Sea laments, love doubts, and tributes to the dead recur, balancing irony with compassion. The book closes with The Revealer, a public-spirited vision addressing leadership and national conscience, bookending the personal portraits with a civic appeal. Throughout, plainspoken music and keen psychology reveal lives poised between aspiration and resignation.