Explore "Reuben Bright" by Edwin Arlington Robinson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
BECAUSE he was a butcher and thereby
Did earn an honest living (and did right), / I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
Was any more a brute than you or I; / For when they told him that his wife must die,
He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright, / And cried like a great baby half that night, / And made the women cry to see him cry.
And after she was dead, and he had paid
The singers and the sexton and the rest,
He packed a lot of things that she had made
Most mournfully away in an old chest
Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down to the slaughter-house.