The Stigma Of Oddness Is The Price

My Heart Is Tuned To Sorrow, And The Strings Vibrate Most Readily To Minor Chords, Searching And Sad; My Mind Is Stuffed With Words Which Voice The Passion And The Ache Of Things: Illusions Beating With Their Baffled Wings Against The Walls Of Circumstance.

Lilacs, False Blue, White, Purple, Colour Of Lilac, Your Great Puffs Of Flowers Are Everywhere In This My New England ... Lilacs In Dooryards Holding Quiet Conversation With An Early Moon; Lilacs Watching A Deserted House; ... Lilacs, Wind-beaten, Staggering Under A Lopsided Shock Of Bloom, You Are Everywhere.

Fifteen Millions Of Soldiers With Popguns And Horses All Bent Upon Killing, Because Their "of Courses" Are Not Quite The Same.

Hate Is Ravening Vulture Beaks Descending On A Place Of Skulls.

I Ask But One Thing Of You, Only One, That Always You Will Be My Dream Of You; That Never Shall I Wake To Find Untrue All This I Have Believed And Rested On, Forever Vanished, Like A Vision Gone Out Into The Night. Alas, How Few There Are Who Strike In Us A Chord We Knew Existed, But So Seldom Heard Its Tone We Tremble At The Half-forgotten Sound. The World Is Full Of Rude Awakenings And Heaven-born Castles Shattered To The Ground, Yet Still Our Human Longing Vainly Clings To A Belief In Beauty Through All Wrongs. O Stay Your Hand, And Leave My Heart Its Songs!