Lady, lady, never start Conversation toward your heart; Keep your pretty words serene; Never murmur what you mean. Show yourself, by word and look,

Accursed from their birth they be Who seek to find monogamy, Pursuing it from bed to bed– I think they would be better dead.

When my eyes are weeds, And my lips are petals, spinning Down the wind that has beginning Where the crumpled beeches start In a fringe of salty reeds;

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 land is bare of chattering folk… The clouds are low along the ridge… And sweet’s the air with curly smo… From all my burning bridges.

Carlyle combined the lit’ry life With throwing teacups at his wife, Remarking, rather testily, “Oh, stop your dodging, Mrs. C.!”

He will love you presently If you be the way you be. Send your heart a-skittering. He will stoop, and lift the thing. Be your dreams as thread, to tease

Should Heaven send me any son, I hope he’s not like Tennyson. I’d rather have him play a fiddle Than rise and bow and speak an idy…

Little things that no one needs— Little things to joke about— Little landscapes, done in beads. Little morals, woven out, Little wreaths of gilded grass,

Joy stayed with me a night— Young and free and fair— And in the morning light He left me there. Then Sorrow came to stay,

Oh, let it be a night of lyric rai… And singing breezes, when my bell… I have so loved the rain that I w… Last in my ears its friendly, dim… I shall lie cool and quiet, who ha…

And let her loves, when she is dea… Write this above her bones: “No more she lives to give us brea… Who asked her only stones.”

Go I must along my ways Though my heart be ragged, Dripping bitter through the days, Festering, and jagged. Smile I must at every twinge,