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

I might have been a worker, but I… I tell my idle stories in a philos… In a fuzzy, spiny mantle of remote… I lie and watch with half-shut eye… And they bustle and they rustle wi…

You think my songs are strange. I think they are myself. I let my fancy range’€” The divagating elf. Don’t say my songs are common.

A bit of metaphysics or a psycholo… Will sit upon my breast all day an… scratch. Now isn’t it a pity that… I really have no liking for abstru… I prefer to laugh in sunshine and…

'He who knows What life and de… Chapman. He who knows what life and death i… Walks superior to fate. Every word that Fortune saith is

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

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…

The passage of dead leaves in spri… Is like the aged vanishing. Amid the bustle and delight Of beauty thronging sound and sigh… Their lengthened course we hardly…

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

My thoughts are like fleas, Eternally skipping. I try as I please To prevent their slipping, To probe them for more meant

Hist! Zop! The world is all awry. Think that you can mend it? Take a turn and try. Virtue gets a fall or two,

Others may seem gay and certain, Steering one unbroken line. But lift up the heart’s dim curtai… It might prove as frail as mine. Full of shift and light vagary,

Sing a little, play a little, Laugh a little; for Life is so extremely brittle, Who would think of more? Every long-laid project shatters,

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…