Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who's sorry for a gnat... or a girl?
I would build a cloudy House For my thoughts to live in; When for earth too fancy-loose And too low for Heaven! Hush! I talk my dream aloud - I build it bright to see, -
O Life, How oft we throw it off and think, -- 'Enough, Enough of life in so much! -- here's a cause For rupture; -- herein we must break with Life, Or be ourselves unworthy; here we are wronged, Maimed, spoiled for aspiration: farewell Life!' -- And so, as froward babes, we hide our eyes And think all ended. -- Then, Life calls to us In some transformed, apocryphal, new voice, Above us, or below us, or around . . Perhaps we name it Nature's..
OF writing many books there is no end; And I who have written much in prose and verse For others' uses, will write now for mine,- Will write my story for my better self, As when you paint your portrait for a friend, Who keeps it in a drawer and looks at it Long after he has ceased to love you, just To hold together what he was and is.
I saw, in gradual vision through my tears, The sweet, sad years, the melancholy years, Those of my own life, who by turns had flung A shadow across me.
XI I sang his name instead of song; Over and over I sang his name: Backward and forward I sang it along, With my sweetest notes, it was still the same! I sang it low, that the slave-girls near
And then people ask me what I mean in [words torn out]. I hope you were among the six who understood or half understood my 'Poet's Vow' -- that is, if you read it at all. Uncle Hedley made a long pause at the first part. But I have been reading, too, Sheridan Knowles's play of the 'Wreckers.' It is full of passion and pathos, and made me shed a great many tears.