Long after there were none of them alive
About the place-where there is now no place
But a walled hole where fruitless vines embrace
Their parent skeletons that yet survive
In evil thorns-none of us could arrive
At a more cogent answer to their ways
Than one old Isaac in his latter days
Had humor or compassion to contrive.

I mentioned them, and Isaac shook his head:
“The Power that you call yours and I call mine
Extinguished in the last of them a line
That Satan would have disinherited.
When we are done with all but the Divine,
We die.” And there was no more to be said.

Analysis, meaning and summary of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem Recalled

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