#AmericanWriters
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
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…
Hist! Zop! The world is all awry. Think that you can mend it? Take a turn and try. Virtue gets a fall or two,
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
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,
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,
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
Sleep and turn and sleep again, Spite of the morning birds. I am weary of strife with men, Weary of fruitless words. Once I traveled in blossomed ways…
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.
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
When I was little, My life was half fear. My nerves were as brittle As nature may bear. Shapes monstrous would follow
The ghost of night’s long hours de… In congregation dreary, And leave my sorrow-trampled heart Intolerably weary. But Chirpings bright in dewy wood…
Silly little bird, Singing of its love, Sang and never heard Winds of wrath above. Winds of wrath came down,
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…
I think about God. Yet I talk of small matters. Now isn’t it odd How my idle tongue chatters! Of quarrelsome neighbors,