Pedantic Literalist
Prince Rupert’s drop, paper muslin ghost,
white torch—“with pow’r to say unkind
things with kindness, and the most
irritating things in the midst of love and
tears,” you invite destruction.
You are like the meditative man
with the perfunctory heart; its
carved cordiality ran
to and fro at first, like an inlaid and roy’l
immutable production;
then afterward “neglected to be
painful” and “deluded him with
loitering formality,
doing its duty as if it did it not,”
presenting an obstruction
to the motive that it served. What stood
erect in you, has withered. A
little “palm-tree of turned wood”
informs your once spontaneous core in its
immutable reduction.