(For Aline) From what old ballad, or from what… Did you descend to glorify the ear… Was it from Chaucer’s singing boo… Or did Watteau’s small brushes gi…

(For Aline) Because the road was steep and lon… And through a dark and lonely land… God set upon my lips a song And put a lantern in my hand.

The halls that were loud with the… Are still with a stillness that is… And never a gust of laughter break… Or rises to shake the ivied walls… The dust is on book and on empty d…

(For A. K. K.) What distant mountains thrill and… Beneath our Lady Folly’s tread? Why has she left us, wise in woe, Shrewd, practical, uncomforted?

(For S.M.L.) I like to look at the blossomy tra… But it isn’t half so fine a sight… When it all was covered over with… And over the crisp and radiant roa…

Now is the rhymer’s honest trade A thing for scornful laughter made… The merchant’s sneer, the clerk’s… These are the burden of our pain. Because of you did this befall,

There was a gentle hostler (And blessed be his name!) He opened up the stable The night Our Lady came. Our Lady and Saint Joseph,

Whenever I walk to Suffern along… I go by a poor old farmhouse with… I suppose I’ve passed it a hundre… And look at the house, the tragic… I never have seen a haunted house,…

Because we never build a nest And no one of us ever sings, We are the butt of every jest That strutting loud-mouthed robin… Unless the field with laughter rin…

With shameless and incessant lust Thy tremulous hot hands are thrust Upon my body’s loveliness. O loathsome Age, thy foul caress Puts on my heart a deadly blight,

(For Aline) Monsignore, Right Reverend Bishop Valentinus… Sometime of Interamna, which is c… Now of the delightful Court of He…

(For Amelia Josephine Burr) The road is wide and the stars are… and the breath of the night is swe… And this is the time when wanderlu… But I’m glad to turn from the ope…

Tired clerks, pale girls, street c… Boys, priests and harlots, drunkar… Each one the pleasant outer sunshi… They mingle in this stifling, loud… The gate clangs to– we stir– we sw…

I think that I shall never see A poem lovely as a tree. A tree whose hungry mouth is prest Against the earth’s sweet flowing… A tree that looks at God all day,

In a wood they call the Rouge Bou… There is a new-made grave to-day, Built by never a spade nor pick Yet covered with earth ten metres… There lie many fighting men,