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,

Nerves are most extraordinary, Full of useful information, At a moment’s notice merry With abounding cacchination, Then with subtle transformation,

The passage of dead leaves in spri… Is like the aged vanishing. Amid the bustle and delight Of beauty thronging sound and sigh… Their lengthened course we hardly…

You may think my life is quiet. I find it full of change, An ever-varied diet, As piquant as ’tis strange. Wild thoughts are always flying,

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

Down come the leaves, Like fleeting years, Or idle tears Of love that grieves. A tinkling trill,

Imagination plays me most intolera… To enumerate them all would be unb… Just a trifle bids them gather and… And they tease me and torment me m… Tricks of strange, disordered acti…

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,

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…

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

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…

When I was little, My life was half fear. My nerves were as brittle As nature may bear. Shapes monstrous would follow

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

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…

The huge old earth shook and quive… When it heard my passionate cry. Why, even the little stars shivere… And almost went out in the sky. But the earth and the stars knew b…