• My letters! all dead paper,… mute and white!—
    And yet they seem alive and quivering
    Against my tremulous hands which loose the string
    And let them drop down on my knee to-night.
    This said,… he wished to have me in his sight
    Once, as a friend: this fixed a day in spring
    To come and touch my hand … a simple thing,
    Yet I wept for it! this,…...

  • A Conversational Pleasantry
    SOME wit of old—such wits of old there were,
    Whose hints showed meaning, whose allusions care—
    By one brave stroke to mark all human kind,
    Called clear, blank paper every infant mind:
    Where still, as opening sense her dictates wrote,
    Fair virtue put a seal, or vice a blot.

    The thought was happy, pertinent, and...