The Reconstructed Argument

This is a dramatic monologue where we hear only one side of a breakup. The woman speaks; her lover's words must be inferred from her responses. He keeps telling her to 'be calm'—she throws it back at him sarcastically in stanzas 1, 8, and 12. He's clearly denying something, probably his affair with the dying woman, because she keeps referencing his 'lies, and lies, and lies'.

The situation: He's been involved with another woman who is visibly dying ("Her death is in her face"). He's now trying to smooth things over, denying the affair, asking his speaker to be reasonable. She's having none of it. When he offers to 'share her burden' in the final stanza, she rejects it as mere performance—too little, too late.

Robinson wrote this around 1916, during his mature period. He specialized in dramatic monologues that reveal character through speech patterns—notice how she speaks faster when agitated ("I may have spoken faster / Than once"), catches herself, then speeds up again. The poem enacts the emotional state it describes.

The Title's Accusation

'The Clinging Vine' was early 20th-century slang for a dependent woman who couldn't survive without male support—decorative, weak, parasitic. The speaker throws this expectation in her lover's face. He wants her to 'creep' with him, to keep 'seeming / To be what I despise'—the compliant woman who overlooks infidelity.

The poem's central irony: she refuses to cling, but he won't let go cleanly. He keeps arguing, denying, offering compromises. She's ending it; he's the one clinging. Notice the progression: she grants him 'the balm of my defeat' sarcastically in stanza 6, but by stanza 9 she's realized 'Your own contriving / Has put the last light out'—his lies killed what remained, not the other woman.

The blind husband in stanza 9 is key. That man "married / Because he couldn't see"—he made a mistake in ignorance. But her lover 'came clear-sighted' and chose deception anyway. That's the unforgivable part: not the affair, but the deliberate lies to someone who offered him truth.

Edwin Arlington Robinson

The Clinging Vine

Dramatic monologue structure

One-sided conversation—we only hear her responses to him. Robinson forces us to reconstruct his words from her replies.

"Be calm? And was I frantic?

You'll have me laughing soon.

I'm calm as this Atlantic,

Atlantic/moon comparison

She claims impossible calm using unstable comparisons—the Atlantic has storms, the moon waxes and wanes. Her metaphors betray her.

And quiet as the moon;

I may have spoken faster

Than once, in other days;

For I've no more a master,

And now—'Be calm,' he says.

"Fear not, fear no commotion,—

I'll be as rocks and sand;

The moon and stars and ocean

Will envy my command;

No creature could be stiller

In any kind of place

Than I . . . No, I'll not kill her;

The rival's death

The other woman is dying (likely of tuberculosis, given the era). She won't kill her because nature already has.

Her death is in her face.

"Be happy while she has it,

For she'll not have it long;

A year, and then you'll pass it,

Preparing a new song.

And I'm a fool for prating

Of what a year may bring,

When more like her are waiting

For more like you to sing.

"You mock me with denial,

You mean to call me hard?

You see no room for trial

When all my doors are barred?

You say, and you'd say dying,

That I dream what I know;

And sighing, and denying,

You'd hold my hand and go.

"You scowl—and I don't wonder;

I spoke too fast again;

But you'll forgive one blunder,

For you are like most men:

You are,—or so you've told me,

So many mortal times,

That heaven ought not to hold me

Accountable for crimes.

"Be calm? Was I unpleasant?

Then I'll be more discreet,

And grant you, for the present,

The balm of my defeat:

What she, with all her striving,

Could not have brought about,

You've done. Your own contriving

Has put the last light out.

"If she were the whole story,

If worse were not behind,

I'd creep with you to glory,

Title irony

She accuses him of expecting her to be a 'clinging vine'—the dependent, decorative woman. This whole speech is her refusal.

Believing I was blind;

I'd creep, and go on seeming

To be what I despise.

You laugh, and say I'm dreaming,

And all your laughs are lies.

"Are women mad? A few are,

And if it's true you say—

If most men are as you are—

We'll all be mad some day.

Be calm—and let me finish;

There's more for you to know.

I'll talk while you diminish,

And listen while you grow.

"There was a man who married

Because he couldn't see;

And all his days he carried

The mark of his degree.

Clear-sighted deception

He saw the truth in her eyes but chose lies anyway—worse than the blind husband who couldn't help his mistake.

But you—you came clear-sighted,

And found truth in my eyes;

And all my wrongs you've righted

With lies, and lies, and lies.

"You've killed the last assurance

That once would have me strive

To rouse an old endurance

That is no more alive.

It makes two people chilly

To say what we have said,

But you—you'll not be silly

And wrangle for the dead.

"You don't? You never wrangle?

Why scold then,—or complain?

More words will only mangle

What you've already slain.

Your pride you can't surrender?

My name—for that you fear?

His fear of scandal

He's worried about his reputation ('My name—for that you fear?'). She mocks his sudden concern for honor.

Since when were men so tender,

And honor so severe?

"No more—I'll never bear it.

I'm going. I'm like ice.

My burden? You would share it?

Forbid the sacrifice!

Forget so quaint a notion,

And let no more be told;

Final temperature

Returns to opening's false calm claim, but now admits coldness—emotional death, not composure. The relationship ends frozen.

For moon and stars and ocean

And you and I are cold."

Source Wikipedia Poetry Foundation