"Edwin Arlington Robinson was a poet who has long been popular among lay readers-the "non-literary" public-but the tremendous scope of his work and the power of his mastery over words marks him as one of the greater poets of his time." In spite of its consistent tone his works showed a great versatility. (Heiney pg. 244) Robinson was a poet of true vision and unimpeachable honesty. (Louis pg. 5) He was a man who loved words. Shy and almost wholly inarticulate he wrote with great labor and absorption. (Louis pg. 20) Robinson was a late romantic, a Victorian, a transcendentalist whose lust after the abstract was nearly destructive. (Louis pg. 15) Robinson was a nineteenth-century product and a scion of New England stock. (Louis pg. 13)
             Edwin Arlington Robinson was born in the tiny village of Head Tide, Maine in 1869, at the very dawn of the Gilded Age. (Louis pg. 8) His family was old and respected; he was descended on his mother's side from a colonial governor of Massachusetts and from a sister of the poetess Ann Bradstreet. (Heiney pg. 248) Robinson was the youngest of three children. His Mother, Mary Elizabeth Palmer, was a woman of some literary taste, though perhaps one may feel free to be skeptical of the quality of such taste. (Coxe pg. 8) Robinson's father, Edward Robinson, was a man of a not insensitive nature and in different circumstances might have shown his oldest and youngest boys more sympathy. (Coxe pg. 8) Herman, the oldest child, was destined to manage the family fortune while Dean, the middle child, was to become a doctor. This left opportunity to Edwin to pursue his dreams. (Ellsworth pg. 34)
             Edward, shortly after Edwin was born, moved the family to another small town Gardiner (which would become "Tilbury Town" of his poems). "He was anticipating a boom in business; he was concentrated in the lumber trade and had ventured into speculation in western p...