How can I work when you play the piano,
Feminine person above?
How can I think, with your ceaseless soprano
Singing: "Ah, Love--"?

How can I dream of a subject aesthetic,
Far from the purlieus of prose?
How, with the call of the peripatetic
"High! High cash clo'es!"?

How can I write when the children are crying?
How can I poetize--how?
How can I help imper_fect_ versifying?
(There is some now.)

How can I bathe in the thought--waves of
beauty?
How, with my nerves on the slant,
Can I perform my poetical duty?
Frankly, I can't.



Ballade of the Breakfast Table


When the Festal Board, as the papers say,
Groans 'neath the weight of a lot to eat,
At breakfast, Fruhstuck or dejeuner,