Why Silent?

Why am I silent from year to year?

Needs must I sing on these blue March days?

What will you say, when I tell you here,

That already, I think, for a little praise,

I have paid too dear?

For, I know not why, when I tell my thought,

It seems as though I fling it away;

And the charm wherewith a fancy is fraught,

When secret, dies with the fleeting lay

Into which it is wrought.

So my butterfly-dreams their golden wings

But seldom unfurl from their chrysalis;

And thus I retain my loveliest things,

While the world, in its worldliness, does not miss

What a poet sings.