| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| II. The Children of the Night |
| 39. Supremacy |
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| THERE is a drear and lonely tract of hell | |
| From all the common gloom removed afar: | |
| A flat, sad land it is, where shadows are, | |
| Whose lorn estate my verse may never tell. | |
| I walked among them and I knew them well: | 5 |
| Men I had slandered on life’s little star | |
| For churls and sluggards; and I knew the scar | |
| Upon their brows of woe ineffable. | |
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| But as I went majestic on my way, | |
| Into the dark they vanished, one by one, | 10 |
| Till, with a shaft of God’s eternal day, | |
| The dream of all my glory was undone,— | |
| And, with a fool’s importunate dismay, | |
| I heard the dead men singing in the sun. | |
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