| Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869–1935). Collected Poems. 1921. |
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| VII. The Three Taverns |
| 16. A Song at Shannon’s |
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| TWO men came out of Shannon’s, having known | |
| The faces of each other for as long | |
| As they had listened there to an old song, | |
| Sung thinly in a wastrel monotone | |
| By some unhappy night-bird, who had flown | 5 |
| Too many times and with a wing too strong | |
| To save himself, and so done heavy wrong | |
| To more frail elements than his alone. | |
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| Slowly away they went, leaving behind | |
| More light than was before them. Neither met | 10 |
| The other’s eyes again or said a word. | |
| Each to his loneliness or to his kind, | |
| Went his own way, and with his own regret, | |
| Not knowing what the other may have heard. | |
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