What should I be but just what I am?

And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

I know what my heart is like Since your love died: It is like a hollow ledge Holding a little pool Left there by the tide, A little tepid pool, Drying inward from the edge.

Ah, I could lay me down in this long grass And close my eyes, and let the quiet wind Blow over me

This have I known always: Love is no more than the wide blossom which the wind assails, than the great tide that treads the shifting shore, strewing fresh wreckage gathered in the gales; Pity me that the heart is slow to learn, that the swift mind beholds at every turn.

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.

To a Young Poet Time cannot break the bird's wing from the bird. Bird and wing together Go down, one feather. No thing that ever flew, Not the lark, not you, Can die as others do.