Pick a quarrel, go to war,

Leave the hero in the bar;

Hunt the lion, climb the peak:

No one guesses you are weak.

The friends of the born nurse

Are always getting worse.

I'm beginning to lose patience

With my personal relations:

They are not deep,

And they are not cheap.

I'm for freedom because I mistrust the Censor in office,

But if I held the job, my! how severe I should be!

When he is well

She gives him hell;

But she's a brick

When he is sick.

Those who will not reason

Perish in the act;

Those who will not act

Perish for that reason.

Let us honor if we can

The vertical man,

Though we value none

But the horizontal one.

Private faces

In public places

Are wiser and nicer

Than public faces

In private places.

The conversation of birds

Say very little,

But mean a great deal.

Among the mammals

Only Man has ears

That can display no emotion.

In moments of joy

All of us wish we possessed

A tail we could wag.

The shame in ageing

is not that Desire should fail

(Who mourns for something

he no longer needs?): it is

That someone else must be told.

The tyrant's device:

Whatever is Posiible

Is Necessary.

Passing Beauty

still delights him,

but he no longer

has to turn round.

Does God ever judge us

by appearances?

I suspect that He does.

Today two poems begged to be written: I had to refuse them.

Sorry, no longer, my dear! Sorry, my precious, not yet!

Only look in the mirror to detect a removable blamish,

As of the permanent ones already you know quite enough.

God never makes knots,

But is expert, if asked to,

At untying them.

A poet's hope: to be,

Like some valley cheese,

Local, but prized elsewhere.