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

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,

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…

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

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

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,

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,

Others make verses of grace. Mine are all muscle and sinew. Others can picture your face. But I all the tumult within you. Others can give you delight,

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 ghost of night’s long hours de… In congregation dreary, And leave my sorrow-trampled heart Intolerably weary. But Chirpings bright in dewy wood…

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

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…