Oh, both my shoes are shiny new, And pristine is my hat; My dress is 1922.... My life is all like that.

This I say, and this I know: Love has seen the last of me. Love’s a trodden lane to woe, Love’s a path to misery. This I know, and knew before,

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.

Hope it was that tutored me, And Love that taught me more; And now I learn at Sorrow’s knee The self-same lore.

When I admit neglect of Gissing, They say I don’t know what I’m mi… Until their arguments are subtler, I think I’ll stick to Samuel But…

Say my love is easy had, Say I’m bitten raw with pride, Say I am too often sad– Still behold me at your side. Say I’m neither brave nor young,

With you, my heart is quiet here, And all my thoughts are cool as ra… I sit and let the shifting year Go by before the windowpane, And reach my hand to yours, my dea…

Too long and quickly have I lived… The woe that stretches me shall ne… Too often seen the end of endless… To swear that peace no more shall… I know, I know– again the shrivel…

Roses, rooted warm in earth, Bud in rhyme, another age; Lilies know a ghostly birth Strewn along a patterned page; Golden lad and chimbley sweep

When you are gone, there is nor bl… Nor singing sea at night, nor silv… And I can only stare, and shape m… In little words. I cannot conjure loveliness, to dr…

And if my heart be scarred and bur… The safer, I, for all I learned; The calmer, I, to see it true That ways of love are never new — The love that sets you daft and da…

Half across the world from me Lie the lands I’ll never see– I, whose longing lives and dies Where a ship has sailed away; I, that never close my eyes

I’m sick of embarking in dories Upon an emotional sea. I’m wearied of playing Dolores (A role never written for me). I’ll never again like a cub lick

Then let them point my every tear, And let them mock and moan; Another week, another year, And I’ll be with my own Who slumber now by night and day