And now I have touched up on a little piece of--
This one is really about me.
Because in my fugitive days when our gang was working together
that they're trying to make poets of ourselves.
And I happened to I was writing some of these tragic poems,
and they asked me about that and I said, well,
I guess I'll just come into a grief.
They tease me with that phrase and they went about saying,
I don't see.
I didn't know anything about Ransom,
has he had some disappointment in love or what could there be.
And so I wrote a little short poem that explains the matter.
And just lately, I touched it up and lengthened it a little bit.
I used a musical expression, phrase, as a title.
"Agitato ma non troppo," with expression, but not
too much expression.
That's about that tragic principle
of dealing with death.
This is what the man said, insisting,
standing on his head.
I've come into a grief.
It was not stolen like a thief and should not
be blown up beyond belief.
They know I have no bitten by the lake to cry it up
and down the break, and nothing since
has been like Dante's fury when Beatrice was given him to bury.
Unless when a young heart favored,
they may know where Percy Shelley's Reed went tremolo.
They say there's something on his mind
but where is this fair child moaning in the wind?
Where is the light frost snowing on his head?
When did he stoke, and weep, and not loll in his bed?
They want the killing blast of grief,
I go according to another grief.
My head, stiff on his promontory cliff,
frowned and elected me to the common grief
by whose poor pities I'm shaken but not as a leaf.
So that was my little defiance after I'd once
made the mistake of replying to their question
why I wrote so many tragic poems.