Look in the deep of me. What are we going to do? If I am I, as I am, who in the world are you? FOR AN IVORY COMB Use me and think of spirit, and spirit yet to be. This is the jest: Could soul touch soul if it were not for me? FOR THE DOLL’S HOUSE Girl-doll would be a little lamp And shine like something new. Boy-doll would be a telephone And have the world speak through. The Poet-doll would like to be A tocsin with a tongue To other little dolls like bells Most sensitively rung. The Baby-doll would be a flower, The Dinah-doll a star, And all--how ignominious! Are only what they are. WHERE THE BOUGHS TOUCH THE WINDOW We lap on the indoor shore--the waves of the leaf mere, We try to tell you as well as we can: We wonder what you hear? FOR ANOTHER WINDOW I see the stones, I see the stars, I know not what they be. They always say things to themselves And now and then to me. But when I try to look between Big stones and little stars, I almost know ... but what I know Flies through the window-bars. And downstairs, on the Telephone: I, the absurdity, Proving what cannot be. Come, when you talk with me Does it become you well To doubt a miracle? We did not understand all of them, but we liked them. And I am sure now that the inscriptions were partly responsible for the fact that in a little time, with Mary Elizabeth and me to give them encouragement, everything, indoors and out, had something to say to us. These things we did not confide to the others, not even to Margaret Amelia and Betty who, when we stood still to spell out the inscriptions, waited a respectful length of time and then plucked at our aprons and said: “Come on till we show you something,” which was usually merely a crass excuse to get us away. So Mary Elizabeth and I discovered, by comparing notes, that at night our Clothes on the chair by the bed would say: “We are so tired. Don’t look at us--we feel so limp.” And the Night would say: “What a long time the Day had you, and how he made you work. Now rest and forget and stop being you, till morning.” Sleep would say: “Here I come. Let me in your brain and I will pull your eyes shut, like little blinds.” And in the morning the Stairs would say: “Come! We are all here, stooping, ready for you to step down on our shoulders.” Breakfast would say: “Now I’m going to be you--now I’m going to be you! And I have to be cross or nice, just as you are.”