Elinor Wylie

I love bright words, words up and singing early;Words that are luminous in the dark, and sing;Warm lazy words, white cattle under trees;I love words opalescent, cool, and pearly,Like midsummer moths, and honied words like bees, Gilded and sticky, with a little sting.

In masks outrageous and austere, The years go by in single file; But none has merited my fear, And none has quite escaped my smile.

I am better able to imagine hell than heaven; it is my inheritance, I suppose.

If any has a stone to throw It is not I ever or now.