I learned "This Is The Price I Pay" as a youth. Here's how I thought the first part fot that poem went:

This is the price I pay —
for just one riotous day —
Pay it I will till the end
until the grave my friend...

-snip-

And I couldn't remember anything that came after that but the word "relief".

I'm pleased to find this poem-if it is indeed the same one-and also pleased to know that its writer was Paul Laurence Dunbar {the religous website where I found this poem http://davidsisler.com/payday02.htm attributed it to Paul Lawrence Dunbar-I suppose he and Paul Laurence are one and the same.

But I still like "my" version of the beginning part of this poem. Maybe that's because I've lived with it so long.

Can anyone else share the words to a poem that he or she thought were the real words until learning differently?