#AmericanWriters
When I was little, My life was half fear. My nerves were as brittle As nature may bear. Shapes monstrous would follow
Hist! Zop! The world is all awry. Think that you can mend it? Take a turn and try. Virtue gets a fall or two,
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…
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
Sing a little, play a little, Laugh a little; for Life is so extremely brittle, Who would think of more? Every long-laid project shatters,
Nerves are most extraordinary, Full of useful information, At a moment’s notice merry With abounding cacchination, Then with subtle transformation,
Just to utter a word, That is all I desire; That may still be heard, When I expire; That still may glow,
That odd, fantastic ass, Rousseau… Declared himself unique. How men persist in doing so, Puzzles me more than Greek. The sins that tarnish whore and th…
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…
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
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…
I like to read confessions As lengthy as Rousseau’s, With all their slow processions Of innumerable woes. I revel in Cellini,
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 think about God. Yet I talk of small matters. Now isn’t it odd How my idle tongue chatters! Of quarrelsome neighbors,
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,