“How first you knew me in a book I wrote,How first you loved me for a written line”

“Oh, friend, forget not, when you fain would noteIn me a beauty that was never mine,How first you knew me in a book I wrote,How first you loved me for a written line....”

“This book, when I am dead, will beA little faint perfume of me.People who knew me well will say,She really used to think that way.”

“Strange how few, After all’s said and done, the things that areOf moment. Few indeed! When I can make Of ten small words a rope to hang the world! “I had you and I have you now no more.” There, there it dangles,—where’s the little truth That can for long keep footing under thatWhen its slack syllables tighten to a thought? Here, let me write it down! I wish to see Just how a thing like that will look on paper! “I had you and I have you now no more.”

“I saw and heard, and knew at lastThe How and Why of all things, past,and present, and forevermore.”

“To Those Without PityCruel of heart, lay down my song.Your reading eyes have done me wrong.Not for you was the pen bitten,And the mind wrung, and the song written.”

“Please give me some good advice in your next letter. I promise not to follow it. (in a letter written while she was in college)”