Recalled by Edwin Arlington Robinson
The poem recalls a vanished group once associated with a place that has itself become only a walled hollow, overgrown with barren vines and thorns around skeletal remnants. The speaker says that no one can explain the people’s behavior more convincingly than old Isaac did. When asked about them, Isaac says that a power beyond human ownership destroyed their line, a line so corrupt that even Satan would reject it. He concludes that when people have exhausted every concern except the Divine, they die.
By Edwin Arlington Robinson · First published 1920 · Genre: Poetry, Sonnet, Philosophical Poetry · 124 words
First lines
LONG after there were none of them alive
About the place - where there is now no place
But a walled hole where fruitless vines embrace
Their parent skeletons that yet survive
What this Textopian page supports
Recalled is listed on Textopian as a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, dated 1920 CE.
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- Work type: Poem
- Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Date: 1920 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Poetry, Sonnet, Philosophical Poetry, Religious Poetry, Dark Poetry
- Length: 124 words
- Structure: 1 section, 13 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Fairly Easy (7th Grade)
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- Work identity for Recalled by Edwin Arlington Robinson
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Similar titles
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- Drifting Apart by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Genres
- Poetry — The work is a fourteen-line, formally structured lyric poem with concentrated imagery, rhyme, and philosophical closure.
- Sonnet — It follows the sonnet form: fourteen lines organized around a reflective turn from the abandoned family and estate to Isaac's theological judgment.
- Philosophical Poetry — The poem meditates on mortality, identity, spiritual meaning, human failure, and the ultimate limits of explanation.
- Religious Poetry — Its conclusion invokes the Divine, Satan, spiritual extinction, and death, framing the ruined lineage through theological language.
Tags
poetry · American literature · lyric poetry · early twentieth century · memory · nostalgia · loss · reflection · melancholy · mortality · love · regret