I need someone to interpret a few lines of a poem for me.

[Chan790]

24. It's from a different poem in the same book.

The name of the poetry collection is also The Man Against the Sky published in 1919, named after the last poem of the collection.
Robinson is often studied as a transitional figure in the early 20^th c. from classical poetry to modern: Robinson stylistically compares to Browning and Coleridge, particularly his adherence to classical forms; his influence in turn can be seen on poets such as T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas in terms of ambiguity and subject-matter.

This collection is a popular study piece for poetry students for a number of reasons, not least is that the meaning of these poems, nearly all about parental relationships, are generally opaque and discomfiting. They're hard to interpret; most analysts agree however that they're not "happy poems", the titular piece often read as a contrast piece to Robert Browning's Childe Roland to The Dark Tower came...another poem of a nightmarish vision with a foreboding tone and ambiguous resolution, often misinterpreted as an optimistic piece for its subject's perseverance through adversity.

The quoted segment comes from The Gift of God, which can be found here: http://intertwingled.net/poets/Edwin%20Arlington%20Robinson/The%20Gift%20of%20God%20-