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Captain Craig

Chapter 25: CORTÈGE

By Edwin Arlington Robinson

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About This Book

A collection of poems beginning with a long narrative portrait of an aging, proud man who drifts into poverty and prompts reflections on dignity, failure, and small mercies. The remaining pieces move among other solitary or strained figures in a small-town milieu, exploring memory, social judgment, domestic life, and the passage of time. Plain diction, subtle irony, and careful dramatic detail shape meditations on compassion, human frailty, and the moral weight of ordinary moments.

CORTÈGE

Four o’clock this afternoon,

Fifteen hundred miles away:

So it goes, the crazy tune,

So it pounds and hums all day.

Four o’clock this afternoon,

Earth will hide them far away:

Best they go to go so soon,

Best for them the grave to-day.

Had she gone but half so soon,

Half the world had passed away.

Four o’clock this afternoon,

Best for them they go to-day.

Four o’clock this afternoon

Love will hide them deep, they say;

Love that made the grave so soon,

Fifteen hundred miles away.

Four o’clock this afternoon—

Ah, but they go slow to-day:

Slow to suit my crazy tune,

Past the need of all we say.

Best it came to come so soon,

Best for them they go to-day:

Four o’clock this afternoon,

Fifteen hundred miles away.