Edwin Arlington Robinson — Her Eyes

Up from the street and the crowds that went,        &nbsp Morning and midnight, to and fro, Still was the room where his days he spent,        &nbsp And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow. Year after year, with his dream shut fast,        &nbsp He suffered and strove till his eyes were dim, For the love that his brushes had earned at last, —        &nbsp And the whole world rang with the praise of him. But he cloaked his triumph, and searched, instead,        &nbsp Till his cheeks were sere and his hairs were gray. "There are women enough, God knows," he said. . . .        &nbsp "There are stars enough — when the sun's away." Then he went back to the same still room        &nbsp That had held his dream in the long ago, When he buried his days in a nameless tomb,        &nbsp And the stars were bleak, and the nights were slow. And a passionate humor seized him there —        &nbsp Seized him and held him until there grew Like life on his canvas, glowing and fair,        &nbsp A perilous face — and an angel's, too. Angel and maiden, and all in one, —        &nbsp All but the eyes. — They were there, but yet They seemed somehow like a soul half done.        &nbsp What was the matter? Did God forget? . . . But he wrought them at last with a skill so sure        &nbsp That her eyes were the eyes of a deathless woman, — With a gleam of heaven to make them pure,        &nbsp And a glimmer of hell to make them human. God never forgets. — And he worships her        &nbsp There in that same still room of his, For his wife, and his constant arbiter        &nbsp Of the world that was and the world that is. And he wonders yet what her love could be        &nbsp To punish him after that strife so grim; But the longer he lives with her eyes to see,        &nbsp The plainer it all comes back to him.