April Comes Like An Idiot, Babbling And

The First Rose On My Rose-tree Budded, Bloomed, And Shattered, During Sad Days When To Me Nothing Mattered. Grief Or Grief Has Drained Me Clean; Still It Seems A Pity No One Saw,—it Must Have Been Very Pretty.

Curse Thee, Life, I Will Live With Thee No More! Thou Hast Mocked Me, Starved Me, Beat My Body Sore! And All For A Pledge That Was Not Pledged By Me, I Have Kissed Thy Crust And Eaten Sparingly That I Might Eat Again, And Met Thy Sneers With Deprecations, And Thy Blows With Tears.

Oh, Friend, Forget Not, When You Fain Would Note In 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.

Life Has No Friend.

Ah, Drink Again This River That Is The Taker-away Of Pain, And The Giver-back Of Beauty! In These Cool Waves What Can Be Lost?-- Only The Sorry Cost Of The Lovely Thing, Ah, Never The Thing Itself! The Level Flood That Laves The Hot Brow And The Stiff Shoulder Is At Our Temples Now. Gone Is The Fever, But Not Into The River; Melted The Frozen Pride, But The Tranquil Tide Runs Never The Warmer For This, Never The Colder. Immerse The Dream. Drench The Kiss. Dip The Song In The Stream.