The man who cloaked his bitterness within <br />This winding-sheet of puns and pleasantries, <br />God never gave to look with common eyes <br />Upon a world of anguish and of sin: <br />His brother was the branded man of Lynn; <br />And there are woven with his jollities <br />The nameless and eternal tragedies <br />That render hope and hopelessness akin. <br /> <br />We laugh, and crown him; but anon we feel <br />A still chord sorrow-swept,—a weird unrest <br />And thin dim shadows home to midnight steal, <br />As if the very ghost of mirth were dead— <br />As if the joys of time to dream had fled, <br />Or sailed away with Ines to the West.<br /><br />Edwin Arlington Robinson<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/thomas-hood/
