How would you describe the theme or themes of Edwin Arlington Robinson's poem "Miniver Cheevy"?

Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Miniver Cheevy” explores
a number of interrelated themes, including a fixation on the supposed attractions of the
past and a disdain for the supposed shortcomings of the present.  Because Miniver wishes
that he had lived in earlier, more appealing times, he ironically wastes the only time
really available to him: the present. It is not by accident that Cheevy is first
identified as a “child of scorn” (1) – that is, as a person full of contempt, apparently
for the passing of time in his own life (“he assailed the seasons” [2]). The only part
of the past he truly seems to regret is the moment of his own birth (3), a birth which
has led (he believes) to his current
dissatisfaction.

Instead of living in and for the present,
Miniver loves “the days of old” (5) – days, of course, that he could never really have
experienced except by reading about them, and days that were probably far more
complicated and far less appealing than he seems to imagine. His enthusiasm for the past
seems naïve, uniformed, and even somewhat ridiculous:

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The vision of a warrior bold
Would set
him dancing. (7-8)

Rather
than taking an active part in trying to shape the present in accordance with his ideals,
Cheevy merely “sigh[s] for what was not” (9) – a phrase that may be especially ironic
since it may suggest that the kind of life Cheevy imagines never really existed in the
ways it exists merely in his imagination. His views of the past have been shaped more by
literature than by hard historical research or practical experience. He is a good
example of a person who would rather live in a kind of dream world rather than face real
and potentially disappointing truths. He is a Romantic in all the worst senses of that
word.

As the poem progresses, Robinson’s satire of Cheevy
becomes increasingly sharp, as when he writes that

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Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he
had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have
been one.  (17-20)

The Medici
were an Italian Renaissance family famous, among other things, for their cynical and
often brutal lives.  The naïve Cheevy wouldn’t have stood a chance among the Medicis,
and indeed he is capable of sinning only in his imagination, where he spends most of his
time.

Robinson’s mockery of Cheevy becomes blatantly
humorous when he writes that Cheevy

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. . . missed the mediaeval grace
Of
iron clothing. (23-24)

It one
thing to fantasize about a suit of armor; it’s another thing altogether to actually wear
one.

In this poem, then, Robinson satirizes an
all-too-common, all-too-human impulse: the impulse to live in a fantasy world rather
than confronting fully the real challenges of the only life one can ever lead: the life
of the here and now.