These tales of old disguisings, ar… Strange myths of souls that found… Unwonted folk that spake an hostil… Some soul from all the rest who’d… The star—span acres of a former lo…

When I behold how black, immortal… Drips from my deathless pen —ah, w… Why should we stop at all for what… There is enough in what I chance… It is enough that we once came tog…

Go, my songs, seek your praise fro… and from the intolerant, Move among the lovers of perfectio… Seek ever to stand in the hard So… And take you wounds from it gladly…

’Tis not a game that plays at mate… Provençe knew; ’Tis not a game of barter, lands a… Provençe knew. We who are wise beyond your dream…

You say that I take a good deal u… That I strut in the robes of assu… In a few years no one will remembe… No one will remember the trivial p… The comic detail will be absent.

We are the Choice of the Will: G… That called us into line, set in o… Set us a sword to wield none else… And bade us forth to the sound of… East and west and north, wherever…

At the table beyond us With her little suede slippers off… With her white-stocking’d feet Carefully kept from the floor by a… She converses:

A square, squat room (a cellar on… Drab to the soul, drab to the very… Plasters astray in unnatural-looki… Scissors and lint and apothecary’s… Here, on a bench a skeleton would…

FROM THE PROVENCAL O… Lady, since you care nothing for m… And since you have shut me away fr… Causelessly, I know not wnere to go seeking,

You played and sang a snatch of so… A song that all-too well we knew; But whither had flown the ancient… And was it really I and you? O, since the end of life’s to live

Here we are, picking the first fer… And saying: When shall we get bac… Here we are because we have the K… We have no comfort because of thes… We grub the soft fern—shoots,

O My songs, Why do you look so eagerly and so… people’s faces, Will you find your lost dead among…

The Sword Singing - The voice of the Sword from the h… Clanging imperious Forth from Time’s battlements