Mad for Poetry

    I live with him, I see his face;    I go no more away    For visitor, or sundown;    Death’s single privacy,     The only one forestalling mine,    And that by right…

    Besides the autumn poets sing,    A few prosaic days    A little this side of the snow    And that side of the haze.     A few incisive mornings,    A few ascetic…

    Not with a club the heart is broken,    Nor with a stone;    A whip, so small you could not see it.    I’ve known     To lash the magic creature    Till…

    Not any higher stands the grave    For heroes than for men;    Not any nearer for the child    Than numb three-score and ten.     This latest leisure equal lulls    The beggar…

    The springtime’s pallid landscape    Will glow like bright bouquet,    Though drifted deep in parian    The village lies to-day.     The lilacs, bending many a year,    With purple load will hang;    The…

    Nature rarer uses yellow    Than another hue;    Saves she all of that for sunsets, —    Prodigal of blue,     Spending scarlet like a woman,    Yellow she affords    Only scantly and selectly,    Like…

    Pigmy seraphs gone astray,    Velvet people from Vevay,    Belles from some lost summer day,    Bees’ exclusive coterie.    Paris could not lay the fold    Belted down with emerald;    Venice could not show…

    My nosegays are for captives;    Dim, long-expectant eyes,    Fingers denied the plucking,    Patient till paradise,     To such, if they should whisper    Of morning and the moor,    They bear no other…

   Farther in summer than the birds,    Pathetic from the grass,    A minor nation celebrates    Its unobtrusive mass.     No ordinance is seen,    So gradual the grace,    A pensive custom it becomes,    Enlarging…