Why am I silent from year to year?
Needs must I sing on these blue March days?
What will you say, when I tell you here, That already, I think, for a little praise, I have paid too dear?
For, I know not why, when I tell my thought, It seems as though I fling it away;And the charm wherewith a fancy is fraught, When secret, dies with the fleeting lay Into which it is wrought.
So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis;And thus I retain my loveliest things, While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss What a poet sings.
