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

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

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

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

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

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

You think my songs are strange. I think they are myself. I let my fancy range’€” The divagating elf. Don’t say my songs are common.

They met, as it were, in a mist, Pale, curious, eager, uncertain. When each clasped the other and ki… The mist rolled aside like a curta… There were fields of delight to ex…

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…

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

Just to utter a word, That is all I desire; That may still be heard, When I expire; That still may glow,

A bit of metaphysics or a psycholo… Will sit upon my breast all day an… scratch. Now isn’t it a pity that… I really have no liking for abstru… I prefer to laugh in sunshine and…

O Robert Lee, you paladin, I wonder how my words would strike… I know the portrait might have bee… In many, many ways more like you. But you would not have had me plan

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,