A poem while I wait ....
192
She dealt her pretty words like Blades -
How glittering they shone -
And every One unbared a Nerve
Or wantoned with a Bone -
She never deemed - she hurt -
That - is not Steel's Affair -
A vulgar grimace in the Flesh -
How ill the Creatures bear -
To Ache is human - not polite-
The Film upon the eye
Mortality's old Custom -
Just locking up - to Die.
c. 1862