My answers are inadequate To those demanding day and date And ever set a tiny shock Through strangers asking what’s o’… Whose days are spent in whittling…

They say He was a serious child, And quiet in His ways; They say the gentlest lady smiled To hear the neighbors’ praise. The coffers of her heart would clo…

What time the gifted lady took Away from paper, pen, and book, She spent in amorous dalliance (They do those things so well in…

Chloe’s hair, no doubt, was bright… Lydia’s mouth more sweetly sad; Hebe’s arms were rather whiter; Languorous-lidded Helen had Eyes more blue than e’er the sky w…

I cannot rest, I cannot rest In straight and shiny wood, My woven hands upon my breast— The dead are all so good! The earth is cool across their eye…

When I consider, pro and con, What things my love is built upon— A curly mouth; a sinewed wrist; A questioning brow; a pretty twist Of words as old and tried as sin;

If she had been beautiful, even, Or wiser than women about her, Or had moved with a certain defian… If she had had sons at her sides, And she with her hands on their sh…

You know the bloom, unearthly whit… That none has seen by morning ligh… The tender moon, alone, may bare Its beauty to the secret air. Who’d venture past its dark retrea…

Always I knew that it could not l… (Gathering clouds, and the snowfla… Now it is part of the golden past (Darkening skies, and the night-wi… It is but cowardice to pretend.

Lady, lady, should you meet One whose ways are all discreet, One who murmurs that his wife Is the lodestar of his life, One who keeps assuring you

My garden blossoms pink and white, A place of decorous murmuring, Where I am safe from August night And cannot feel the knife of Spri… And I may walk the pretty place

If, with the literate, I am Impelled to try an epigram, I never seek to take the credit; We all assume that Oscar said it.

Drink and dance and laugh and lie, Love, the reeling midnight through… For tomorrow we shall die! (But, alas, we never do.)

A nobler king had never breath– I say it now, and said it then. Who weds with such is wed till dea… And wedded stays in Heaven. Amen. (And oh, the shirts of linen-lawn,