| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| II. The Children of the Night |
| 29. Reuben Bright |
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| 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, | 5 |
| 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. | |
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| And after she was dead, and he had paid | |
| The singers and the sexton and the rest, | 10 |
| 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. | |
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