The World

by Edwin Arlington Robinson (1897)

Some are the brothers of all humankind,
  And own them, whatsoever their estate;
And some, for sorrow and self-scorn, are blind
  With enmity for man's unguarded fate.

For some there is a music all day long
  Like flutes in Paradise, they are so glad;
And there is hell's eternal under-song
  Of curses and the cries of men gone mad.

Some say the Scheme with love stands luminous,
  Some say 't were better back to chaos hurled;
And so 't is what we are that makes for us
  The measure and the meaning of the world.


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