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

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

I’ve been a hopeless sinner, but… saint, Their bend of weary knees and thei… tortions long and faint, And the endless pricks of conscien…

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…

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’ve had a few diseases, And trifled with despair, Tried failure which displeases, And coquetted with care. But through the stormy weather

When I was a little boy, I followed hope and slighted joy. Now my wit has larger scope, I clutch at joy and heed not hope. At least that doctrine I profess,

You really can’t imagine how I lo… I love the dancing language where… I love the songs of Homer, flowin… With a touch of human kindness in… I love the Alexandrians whose ini…

I’m sick to death of money, of the… And of practising perpetually smal… Of paring off a penny here, anothe… Of the planning and the worrying,… The savages went naked and no doub…

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…

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…

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…

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,

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