The Weeping Burgher Lyrics

It is with a strange malice
That I distort the world.


Ah! that ill humors
Should mask as white girls.

And ah! that Scaramouche
Should have a black barouche.

The sorry verities!
Yet in excess, continual,
There is cure of sorrow.

Permit that if as ghost I come
Among the people burning in me still,
I come as belle design
Of foppish line.

And I, then, tortured for old speech—
A white of wildly woven rings;
I, weeping in a calcined heart—
My hands such sharp, imagined things.

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About

Genius Annotation

A poem of unusual personal engagement for Stevens– the “I” is a middle-class, contented man, bearing considerable resemblance to the poet himself.

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Credits
Release Date
October 1, 1919
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