Lyric night of the lingering Indian Summer, Shadowy fields that are scentless but full of singing, Never a bird, but the passionless chant of insects, Ceaseless, insistent. The grasshopper's horn, and far-off, high in the maples, The wheel of a locust leisurely grinding the silence Under a moon waning and worn, broken, Tired with summer.

One by one, like leaves from a tree, / All my faiths have forsaken me.

I am not yours, nor lost in you, not lost, although I long to be. Lost as a candle lit at noon, lost as a snowflake in the sea. You love me, and I find you still a spirit beautiful and bright, yet I am I, who long to be lost as a light is lost in light.

Into my heart's treasury I slipped a coin That Time cannot take Nor a thief purloin- O better than the minting Of a gold-crowned king Is the safe-kept memory Of a lovely thing.

My theory is that poems are written because of a state of emotional irritation. It may be present for some time before the poet is conscious of what is tormenting him. The emotional irritation springs, probably, from subconscious combinations of partly forgotten thoughts and feelings. Coming together, like electrical currents in a thunder storm, they produce a poem. ... the poem is written to free the poet from an emotional burden.

The grass is waking in the ground, / Soon it will rise and blow in waves - / How can it have the heart to sway / Over the graves, / New graves?

Let this single hour atone For the theft of all of me