Old Trails by Edwin Arlington Robinson

Name: Old Trails
Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson

In “Washington Square,” the speaker encounters a man who returns like a ghost to familiar places burdened by failure, memory, and unrealized hopes. The man calls himself a ruin who meant well, says that his dreams have come true for other men, and alternates between bleak self-knowledge and defiant faith that “God lives.” His laughter, drinking, and manner reveal someone partly deadened by disappointment yet still painfully alive and unable to accept his diminished place. The speaker reflects on the perversity and misfortune that have brought the man back, believing that he cannot regain honor until the dead part of himself has been put away. The man recognizes the speaker’s concern and judgment, but insists that hope still drives him: it carried him through storms and brought him back from the prospect of dying alone in foreign obscurity. Drawn by an urge he cannot explain, he has returned to his old room in Eleventh Street to live again. The speaker accompanies him there, imagining ghosts rising and following them. The room is now bleak and unfit for living men, and the man removes only a few possessions before leaving. Outside, beneath the lamps of the Avenue, he rejects the idea that he himself is ruined. He claims that the ruin is someone else, declaring that he has not failed but merely not achieved. He then dines and celebrates with reckless confidence, singing that God lives and that he is the man. The speaker confirms that the man eventually proves himself: after three weeks of indulgence and five years of work in Yonkers, he saunters into fame. His success frees him from the lonely ghost-haunted existence that once threatened him, replacing dim memories with public applause and a safer, though still dangerous, life. The speaker is glad to have been wrong about him, even while old echoes remain troubling and the bells in Boris still evoke the earlier time.

By Edwin Arlington Robinson · First published 1926 · Genre: Narrative Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Psychological Poetry · 1,062 words

First lines

(WASHINGTON SQUARE)

I MET him, as one meets a ghost or two, / Between the gray Arch and the old Hotel.

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Old Trails is listed on Textopian as a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, dated 1926 CE.

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Work type: Poem
Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson
Date: 1926 CE
Language: English
Genres: Narrative Poetry, Lyric Poetry, Psychological Poetry, Dramatic Monologue, Urban Poetry
Length: 1,062 words
Structure: 1 section, 75 paragraphs
Reading fit: Easy (6th Grade)

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Genres

Narrative Poetry — The work recounts a sustained encounter between a narrator and a troubled returning man, with dialogue, setting, action, and a concluding retrospective arc.
Lyric Poetry — Its principal force lies in reflective language, emotional atmosphere, metaphor, rhythm, and meditations on disappointment, memory, hope, and mortality.
Psychological Poetry — The poem closely examines the man's damaged self-image, thwarted ambitions, compulsive hope, fear of failure, and uneasy recovery.
Dramatic Monologue — Much of the poem is shaped by the central figure's extended, revealing speech, through which his character and inner conflicts emerge.