Imagination plays me most intolera… To enumerate them all would be unb… Just a trifle bids them gather and… And they tease me and torment me m… Tricks of strange, disordered acti…

Others make verses of grace. Mine are all muscle and sinew. Others can picture your face. But I all the tumult within you. Others can give you delight,

O Robert Lee, you paladin, I wonder how my words would strike… I know the portrait might have bee… In many, many ways more like you. But you would not have had me plan

The ghost of night’s long hours de… In congregation dreary, And leave my sorrow-trampled heart Intolerably weary. But Chirpings bright in dewy wood…

I like to read confessions As lengthy as Rousseau’s, With all their slow processions Of innumerable woes. I revel in Cellini,

I might forget ambition and the hu… I might forget the passion to esca… I might forget the curious dreams… My fancy day and night. I might f… If I could let the pen alone and…

I had visited her often, Long had sought, with vain endeavo… Her obdurate heart to soften; But she answered, ‘never, never.’ Then it softened and ran widely,

Sleep and turn and sleep again, Spite of the morning birds. I am weary of strife with men, Weary of fruitless words. Once I traveled in blossomed ways…

That odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau… Declared himself unique. How men persist in doing so, Puzzles me more than Greek. The sins that tarnish whore and th…

Who cares, Though age oppress, And griefs distress, And the long, long day Rolls slow away

I think about God. Yet I talk of small matters. Now isn’t it odd How my idle tongue chatters! Of quarrelsome neighbors,

Of old our father’s God was real, Something they almost saw, Which kept them to a stern ideal And scourged them into awe. They walked the narrow path of rig…

I’m writing comedy again, The daintiest pleasure known to me… Unless a daintier might be To watch your acted comedy: The airy ladies gaily dressed,

An eye where love with laughter tw… And songs on kisses still insisten… Blended with graying hair and wrin… To you, my child, seem inconsisten… In fact, you think such conduct sh…

When I was a little boy, I followed hope and slighted joy. Now my wit has larger scope, I clutch at joy and heed not hope. At least that doctrine I profess,