I deliver a lecture And pour out my soul, Its full architecture, All rounded and whole. But with those I love best

I might forget ambition and the hu… I might forget the passion to esca… I might forget the curious dreams… My fancy day and night. I might f… If I could let the pen alone and…

I might have been a worker, but I… I tell my idle stories in a philos… In a fuzzy, spiny mantle of remote… I lie and watch with half-shut eye… And they bustle and they rustle wi…

Others may seem gay and certain, Steering one unbroken line. But lift up the heart’s dim curtai… It might prove as frail as mine. Full of shift and light vagary,

An eye where love with laughter tw… And songs on kisses still insisten… Blended with graying hair and wrin… To you, my child, seem inconsisten… In fact, you think such conduct sh…

My thoughts are like fleas, Eternally skipping. I try as I please To prevent their slipping, To probe them for more meant

Of old our father’s God was real, Something they almost saw, Which kept them to a stern ideal And scourged them into awe. They walked the narrow path of rig…

I like to read confessions As lengthy as Rousseau’s, With all their slow processions Of innumerable woes. I revel in Cellini,

My life is governed by the clock, All duly mapped and plotted; And only with a nervous shock I miss the time allotted. My course without has always been

I think about God. Yet I talk of small matters. Now isn’t it odd How my idle tongue chatters! Of quarrelsome neighbors,

I’m writing comedy again, The daintiest pleasure known to me… Unless a daintier might be To watch your acted comedy: The airy ladies gaily dressed,

Who cares, Though age oppress, And griefs distress, And the long, long day Rolls slow away

The idle wind blows all the day. I wish it blew my care away. The idle wind blows all day long And weaves a burden to my song Upon the melancholy flight

She fled me through the meadow, She fled me o’er the hill. With such a fling she fled, oh, She may be flying still. But doubtless she grew weary

Oh, my youth was hot and eager, And my heart was burning, burning, And the present joy seemed meagre, Dwarfed by that perpetual yearning… I was always madly asking