#AmericanWriters
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.
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,
You may think my life is quiet. I find it full of change, An ever-varied diet, As piquant as ’tis strange. Wild thoughts are always flying,
When I was little, My life was half fear. My nerves were as brittle As nature may bear. Shapes monstrous would follow
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,
Hist! Zop! The world is all awry. Think that you can mend it? Take a turn and try. Virtue gets a fall or two,
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…
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…
Down come the leaves, Like fleeting years, Or idle tears Of love that grieves. A tinkling trill,
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,
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’ve been a hopeless sinner, but… saint, Their bend of weary knees and thei… tortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscien…
Oh, my youth was hot and eager, And my heart was burning, burning, And the present joy seemed meagre, Dwarfed by that perpetual yearning… I was always madly asking
Who cares, Though age oppress, And griefs distress, And the long, long day Rolls slow away
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…