A Great Man Leaves Clean Work Behind

And Marlowe, Webster, Fletcher, Ben, Whose Fire-hearts Sowed Our Furrows When The World Was Worthy Of Such Men.

Enough! We're Tired, My Heart And I. We Sit Beside The Headstone Thus, And Wish That Name Were Carved For Us. The Moss Reprints More Tenderly The Hard Types Of The Mason's Knife, As Heaven's Sweet Life Renews Earth's Life With Which We're Tired, My Heart And I .... In This Abundant Earth No Doubt Is Little Room For Things Worn Out: Disdain Them, Break Them, Throw Them By! And If Before The Days Grew Rough We Once Were Loved, Used, - Well Enough, I Think, We've Fared, My Heart And I.

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.

Books, Books, Books! I Had Found The Secret Of A Garret Room Piled High With Cases In My Father’s Name; Piled High, Packed Large,--where, Creeping In And Out Among The Giant Fossils Of My Past, Like Some Small Nimble Mouse Between The Ribs Of A Mastodon, I Nibbled Here And There At This Or That Box, Pulling Through The Gap, In Heats Of Terror, Haste, Victorious Joy, The First Book First. And How I Felt It Beat Under My Pillow, In The Morning’s Dark, An Hour Before The Sun Would Let Me Read! My Books!

Tis Aye A Solemn Thing To Me To Look Upon A Babe That Sleeps-- Wearing In Its Spirit-deeps The Unrevealed Mystery Of Its Adam's Taint And Woe, Which, When They Revealed Lie, Will Not Let It Slumber So.