| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| II. The Children of the Night |
| 38. Sonnet |
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| WHEN we can all so excellently give | |
| The measure of love’s wisdom with a blow,— | |
| Why can we not in turn receive it so, | |
| And end this murmur for the life we live? | |
| And when we do so frantically strive | 5 |
| To win strange faith, why do we shun to know | |
| That in love’s elemental over-glow | |
| God’s wholeness gleams with light superlative? | |
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| Oh, brother men, if you have eyes at all, | |
| Look at a branch, a bird, a child, a rose, | 10 |
| Or anything God ever made that grows,— | |
| Nor let the smallest vision of it slip, | |
| Till you may read, as on Belshazzar’s wall, | |
| The glory of eternal partnership. | |
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