| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| II. The Children of the Night |
| 27. Thomas Hood |
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| THE MAN who cloaked his bitterness within | |
| This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries, | |
| God never gave to look with common eyes | |
| Upon a world of anguish and of sin: | |
| His brother was the branded man of Lynn; | 5 |
| And there are woven with his jollities | |
| The nameless and eternal tragedies | |
| That render hope and hopelessness akin. | |
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| We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel | |
| A still chord sorrow-swept,—a weird unrest | 10 |
| And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal, | |
| As if the very ghost of mirth were dead— | |
| As if the joys of time to dream had fled, | |
| Or sailed away with Ines to the West. | |
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