To banish cares, scare away sorrow and soothe pain is the business of the poet and singer.

To banish cares, scare away sorrow and soothe pain is the business of the poet and singer.

What a man is ashamed of is always at bottom himself; and he is ashamed of himself at bottom always read more

What a man is ashamed of is always at bottom himself; and he is ashamed of himself at bottom always for being afraid.

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round read more

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the read more

I have often thought what a melancholy world this would be without children, and what an inhuman world without the aged

When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this: When you read more

When you were born, you cried and everybody else was happy. The only question that matters is this: When you die, will YOU be happy when everybody else is crying?

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am read more

I am inhabited by a cry.
Nightly it flaps out
Looking, with its hooks, for something to love.
I am terrified by this dark thing
That sleeps in me;
All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity.

Well, there's no one at all, they do be saying, but is deserving of some punishment from the very minute read more

Well, there's no one at all, they do be saying, but is deserving of some punishment from the very minute of his birth.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

Progress is the injustice each generation commits with regard to its predecessors.

In private grief with careless scorn. In public seem to triumph and not to mourn.

In private grief with careless scorn. In public seem to triumph and not to mourn.