Music, my rampart and my only one.

Into each dance must be packed the panic and ecstasy of her last moment of life, for underneath was death.

I will come back to you, I swear I will;And you will know me still.I shall be only a little tallerThan when I went.

Beauty is whatever gives joy.

Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.

I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.

And must I then, indeed, Pain, live with youall through my life?-sharing my fire, my bed,Sharing-oh, worst of all things!-the same head?-And, when I feed myself, feeding you too?

Degraded bird, I give you back your eyes forever, ascend now whither you are tossed;Forsake this wrist, forsake this rhyme;Soar, eat ether, see what has never been seen; depart, be lost,But climb.

Listen, children:Your father is dead.From his old coatsI’ll make you little jackets;I’ll make you little trousersFrom his old pants.There’ll be in his pocketsThings he used to put there,Keys and penniesCovered with tobacco;Dan shall have the...

You see, I am a poet, and not quite right in the head, darling. It’s only that.

The first rose on my rose-tree Budded, bloomed, and shattered, During sad days when to me Nothing mattered. Grief of grief has drained me clean; Still it seems a pity No one saw,—it must have...

They say when you are missing someone that they are probably feeling the same, but I don’t think it’s possible for you to miss me as much as I’m missing you right now

I do not think there is a woman in whom the roots of passion shoot deeper than in me.

A person who publishes a book willfully appears before the populace with his pants down. If it is a good book nothing can hurt him. If it is a bad book nothing can help him.

The sky, I thought, is not so grand;I ‘most could touch it with my hand!And reaching up my hand to try,I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

Second FigSafe upon the solid rock the ugly houses stand: Come and see my shining palace built upon the sand!

What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,I have forgotten, and what arms have lainUnder my head till morning, but the rainIs full of ghosts tonight, that tap and sighUpon the glass and...

Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.

Still must the poet as of old,In barren attic bleak and cold,Starve, freeze, and fashion verses toSuch things as flowers and song and you;Still as of old his being giveIn Beauty’s name, while she may...

Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would noteIn me a beauty that was never mine,How first you knew me in a book I wrote,How first you loved me for a written line….

Love is Not AllLove is not all: it is not meat nor drinkNor slumber nor a roof against the rain; Nor yet a floating spar to men that sink And rise and sink and rise...

I would I were alive again to kiss the fingers of the rain.

A person who publishes a book appears willfully in public eye with his pants down.

And all at once the heavy nightFell from my eyes and I could see, –A drenched and dripping apple-tree,A last long line of silver rain,A sky grown clear and blue again.And as I looked a...

After all my erstwhile dear, my no longer cherished; Need we say it was not love, just because it perished?

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.

My candle burns at both ends;It will not last the night;But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—It gives a lovely light!

Now goes under, and I watch it go under, the sunThat will not rise again.Today has seen the setting, in your eyes cold and senseless as the sea,Of friendship better than bread, and of bright...

EbbI know what my heart is likeSince your love died:It is like a hollow ledgeHolding a little poolLeft there by the tide,A little tepid pool,Drying inward from the edge.

Childhood is not from birth to a certain age and at a certain age. The child is grown, and puts away childish things. Childhood is the kingdom where nobody dies.

There is no memory of him here!” And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

Catch from the board of beauty/ Such careless crumbs as fall.

If I had loved you less or played you slyly, I might have held you for a summer more, But at the cost of words I value highly, And no such summer as the one...

Lost in Hell,-Persephone,Take her head upon your knee;Say to her, “My dear, my dear,It is not so dreadful here.

Pity me that the heart is slow to learnWhat the swift mind beholds at every turn.

Moon, that against the lintel of the westYour forehead lean until the gate be swung,Longing to leave the world and be at rest,Being worn with faring and no longer young,Do you recall at all the...

Life must go on; I forget just why.

I dread no more the first white in my hair,Or even age itself, the easy shoe,The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair:Time, doing this to me, may alter tooMy anguish, into something I can...

Stranger, pause and look;From the dust of agesLift this little book,Turn the tattered pages,Read me, do not let me die!Search the fading letters findingSteadfast in the broken bindingAll that once was I!

Searching my heart for its true sorrow, This is the thing I find to be: That I am weary of words and people, Sick of the city, wanting the sea.

My heart is warm with the friends I make,And better friends I’ll not be knowing,Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,No matter where it’s going.

Song of a Second AprilAPRIL this year, not otherwiseThan April of a year agoIs full of whispers, full of sighs,Dazzling mud and dingy snow;Hepaticas that pleased you soAre here again, and butterflies.There rings a hammering...

No one but Night, with tears on her dark face, watches beside me in this windy place.

I know I am but summer to your heart, and not the full four seasons of the year.