To lead these creatures up to find the light,
Or the way to be drawn down to find the dark
Again?
Captain Craig, in a word, is self-expression in very being and condemns in joyous scorn the man who believes that life is best fulfilled through discipline and renunciation. Instead he offers something positive:
Take on yourself
But your sincerity, and you take on
Good promise for all climbing; fly for truth,
And hell shall have no storm to crush your flight,
No laughter to vex down your loyalty.
This is the note throughout all Robinson’s poems and plays. His disbelief in negativism leads him often to be impatient and caustic and leads the cloudy minded to timid deprecation of his cynicism, not knowing the difference between this and irony; but Mr. Robinson is never cynical toward the things that are more excellent. He is only convinced that people’s Puritan convictions as to what is more excellent result in a perverted estimate; he is only attempting to substitute light for shadow, laughter for gloom; he is only saying with Larry Scammon: