"I'd rather be loved, and love, than be Shakespeare."

Ambition is what calls the mountain till it comes,

Or goes where it is and gnaws the mountain down.

But she is not ambitious. She makes a choice,

Which, being she, is foregoing neither wholly,

As: how should she not be of the many-parted poet

Miranda sometimes, Lear's daughter, or Elizabeth,

Or not be as she is, fresh beauty to the use?

She writes; is a woman; Shakespeare would know her.

As for the other, loving her makes me that poet.

Once I desired her, not seeing who she was,

Having been then married to her a morning's years,

To the straight smooth back, the opening kiss,

The laughter a red peony thrown and bursting.

She is my stranger every day. She is wretched

With doubt; everyone seeks her reassurance;

Quick-tempered as firecrackers, scornful, clean;

A spiritual materialist, Eve with clothes on.

No one knows her loneliness or believes it;

Not I, but that it is the edge of my world,

And when she comes back, then I can come back

From looking over. She is warm, her cheek is warm.

Bored with sameness, we re-read one another.

We break up housekeeping to keep our house alive,

And are thought a steady pair. Oh, she has her wish!

She, whatever she does next, is my one wish.