There is joy over disappointment And delight in hopes that were vain. Each poet is glad there was no cure To stop his lonely pain. For nothing keeps a poet In his high singing mood Like unappeasable hunger For unattainable food.

For blows on the fort of evil That never shows a breach, For terrible life-long races To a goal no foot can reach, For reckless leaps into darkness With hands …

Lord Byron and Shelley and Plunkett, McDonough and Hunt and Pearse See now why their hatred of tyrants Was so insistently fierce. Is Freedom only a Will-o'-the…

Your eyes, that looked on glory, could discover The angry scar to which the world was blind: And it was grief that made Mankind your lover, And it was grief th…

With a sudden sharp hot stink of fox, It enters the dark hole of the head. The window is starless still; the clock ticks, The page is printed.

A friend came over to the house a few days ago and read one of my poems. He came back today and asked to read the same poem over again. After he finished readi…

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay, Invention, Nature's child, fled step-dame Study's blows, And others' feet still seemed but strangers in…