For this peculiar tint that paints my house
Peculiar in an alien atmosphere
Where other houses wear a kindred hue,
I have a stirring always very rare
And romance-making in my ardent blood,
That channels through my body like a flood.

I know the dark delight of being strange,
The penalty of difference in the crowd,
The loneliness of wisdom among fools,
Yet never have I felt but very proud,
Though I have suffered agonies of hell,
Of living in my own peculiar cell.

There is an exaltation of man's life,

Curie
of the laboratory
of vocabulary
she crushed
the tonnage
of consciousness
congealed to phrases
to extract
a radium of the word.

For they are dead.
They have learned to be truthful.
Respect for the truthfulness of the dead.

Remember them as they were not,
For this is how they are now.
Think of them with bowed hate.
For they did not choose to die,
And yet they are dead.

They gave false witness:
Life was not as they lived it.
And yet they now speak the truth.
Respect for the dead.
Respect for the truth.

Are the dead the truth?
Yes, because they live not.
Is the truth the dead?
No, because they live not.
What is the truth?

For the sun that shone at the dawn of spring,
For the flowers which bloom and the birds that sing,
For the verdant robe of the gray old earth,
For her coffers filled with their countless worth,
For the flocks which feed on a thousand hills,
For the rippling streams which turn the mills,
For the lowing herds in the lovely vale,
For the songs of gladness on the gale, —
From the Gulf and the Lakes to the Oceans' banks, —
Lord God of Hosts, we give Thee thanks!

For the farmer reaping his whitened fields,

For the sake of a weathered gray city set high on a hill
To the northward I go,
Where Umbria's valley lies mile upon emerald mile
Outspread like a chart.
The wind in her steep narrow streets is eternally chill
From the neighboring snow,
But linger who will in the lure of a southerly smile,
Here is my heart.

Wrought to a mutual blueness are mountains and sky;
Intermingling they meet.
Little gray breathings of olive arise from the plain
Like sighs that are seen,
For man and his maker harmonious toil, and the sigh

For the bumps bangs & scratches of
collisive encounters
madam
I through time's ruts and weeds
sought you, metallic, your
stainless steel flivver:
I have banged you, bumped
and scratched, side-swiped,
momocked & begommed you &
your little flivver still
works so well.

For such as you, I do believe,
Spirits their softest carpets weave,
And spread them out with gracious hand
Wherever you walk, wherever you stand.

For such as you, of scent and dew
Spirits their rarest nectar brew,
And where you sit and where you sup
Pour beauty's elixir in your cup.

For all day long, like other folk,
You bear the burden, wear the yoke,
And yet when I look into your eyes at eve
You are lovelier than ever, I do believe.

For sport my Julia threw a Lace
Of silke and silver at my face:
Watchet the silke was; and did make
A shew, as if't'ad been a snake:
The suddenness did me affright;
But though it scar'd, it did not bite.

For seven long years I had declared my passion
To the slender and gentle maid: but in vain.
My tongue was eloquent in the expression of my love:
But till last night sorrow was the sole fruit of my cares.
Then I obtained the reward of all my disappointments
From her whose complexion is the image of the wave.
Then, favourably receiving my addresses,
She admitted me to all the happy mysteries of love--
To converse without restraint,
To kiss the dear fair-one with the jetty eyebrows,
And with my arm support her head;
Bright maid, with the snowy hue:

For physic and farces his equal there scarce is;
His farces are physic; his physic a farce is.