An eye where love with laughter twinkles,
And songs on kisses still insistent,
Blended with graying hair and wrinkles,
To you, my child, seem inconsistent?
...
Oh, my youth was hot and eager,
And my heart was burning, burning,
And the present joy seemed meagre,
Dwarfed by that perpetual yearning.
...
Hist! Zop!
The world is all awry.
Think that you can mend it?
Take a turn and try
...
You think my songs are strange.
I think they are myself.
I let my fancy range—
The divagating elf.
...
I like to read confessions
As lengthy as Rousseau's,
With all their slow processions
Of innumerable woes.
...
Nerves are most extraordinary,
Full of useful information,
At a moment's notice merry
With abounding cacchination,
...
A bit of metaphysics or a psychologic catch
Will sit upon my breast all day and scratch and scratch and
scratch. Now isn't it a pity that the ragged thorns of culture Should be tearing at my vitals, as Prometheus's the vulture?
...
My thoughts are like fleas,
Eternally skipping.
I try as I please
To prevent their slipping,
...
I might have been a worker, but I'm nothing but a drone.
I tell my idle stories in a philosophic tone.
In a fuzzy, spiny mantle of remoteness softly furled
I lie and watch with half-shut eyes the stupefying world.
...
Who cares,
Though age oppress,
And griefs distress,
And the long, long day
...