80
LAST WORDS
But the Bride she rejected, you know, with expressions I will not repeat.
Well—she did no more than all publishers did. Though my prospects were marred,
I can pity and pardon them. Blindness, mere blindness! And yet it was hard.
For a poet, Bill, is a blossom—a bird—a billow—a breeze—
A kind of creature that moves among men as a wind among trees.
I with the heat of my heart still burning against all bars
As the fire of the dawn, so to speak, in the blanched blank brows of the stars—
I with my tremulous lips made pale by musical breath—
I with the shade in my eyes that was left by the kisses of death—
