Several of nature’s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

—EMILY DICKINSON,
“The Snake”

A bloody and a sudden end,
Gunshot or a noose,

For Death who takes what man would keep,
Leaves what men would lose.

He might have had my sister,
My cousins by the score,

But nothing satisfied the fool
But my dear Mary Moore;

None other knows what pleasures man
At table or in bed.

What shall I do for pretty girls
Now my old bawd is dead?

—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS,
“John Kinsella’s Lament for
Mrs. Mary Moore”