An Audio Guide to Poetry Recitation - 32. "Miniver Cheevy"

An Audio Guide to Poetry Recitation - 32. "Miniver Cheevy"


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Sometimes the emotions in the story are very complex. In Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem Miniver Cheevy, for example, the poem tells a story that is simultaneously very sad and very funny. It is the story of an alcoholic who's at odds with his own life, caught in a kind of web  of bitter disillusionment. Listen to how well David Mason brings all of those emotions across in a reading that is both funny and sad.

Miniver Cheevy
by Edwin Arlington Robinson
[Read by David Mason]

Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn,
   Grew lean while he assailed the seasons;
He wept that he was ever born,
   And he had reasons.

Miniver loved the days of old
   When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;
The vision of a warrior bold
   Would set him dancing.

Miniver sighed for what was not,
   And dreamed, and rested from his labors;
He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot,
   And Priam's neighbors.

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
   That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
   And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
   Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
   Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
   And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the medi?val grace
   Of iron clothing.

Miniver scorned the gold he sought,
   But sore annoyed was he without it;
Miniver thought, and thought, and thought,
   And thought about it.

Miniver Cheevy, born too late,
   Scratched his head and kept on thinking;
Miniver coughed, and called it fate,
   And kept on drinking.