Read "The Pilot" by Edwin Arlington Robinson online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
FROM the Past and Unavailing
Out of cloudland we are steering:
After groping, after fearing, / Into starlight we come trailing, / And we find the stars are true.
Still, O comrade, what of you?
You are gone, but we are sailing, / And the old ways are all new.
For the Lost and Unreturning
We have drifted, we have waited;
Uncommanded and unrated, / We have tossed and wandered, yearning
For a charm that comes no more
From the old lights by the shore:
We have shamed ourselves in learning
What you knew so long before.
For the Breed of the Far-going
Who are strangers, and all brothers, / May forget no more than others
Who looked seaward with eyes flowing.
But are brothers to bewail
One who fought so foul a gale?
You have won beyond our knowing, / You are gone, but yet we sail.