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,

Just to utter a word, That is all I desire; That may still be heard, When I expire; That still may glow,

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…

I’ve had a few diseases, And trifled with despair, Tried failure which displeases, And coquetted with care. But through the stormy weather

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.

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,

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,

They met, as it were, in a mist, Pale, curious, eager, uncertain. When each clasped the other and ki… The mist rolled aside like a curta… There were fields of delight to ex…

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

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,

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…

'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

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

She fled me through the meadow, She fled me o’er the hill. With such a fling she fled, oh, She may be flying still. But doubtless she grew weary