Tie the Strings to my Life, My Lord,
Then, I am ready to go!
Just a look at the Horses —
Rapid! That will do!

Put me in on the firmest side —
So I shall never fall —
For we must ride to the Judgment —
And it’s partly, down Hill —

But never I mind the steeper —
And never I mind the Sea —
Held fast in Everlasting Race —
By my own Choice, and Thee —

Goodbye to the Life I used to live —
And the World I used to know —
And kiss the Hills, for me, just once —
Then — I am ready to go!

Bound — a trouble –
And lives can bear it!
Limit — how deep a bleeding go!
So — many — drops — of vital scarlet –
Deal with the soul
As with Algebra!

Tell it the Ages — to a cypher –
And it will ache — contented — on –
Sing — at its pain — as any Workman –
Notching the fall of the Even Sun!

Mama never forgets her birds,
Though in another tree –
She looks down just as often
And just as tenderly
As when her little mortal nest
With cunning care she wove –
If either of her “sparrows fall,”
She “notices,” above.

The Guest is gold and crimson –
An Opal guest and gray –
Of Ermine is his doublet –
His Capuchin gay –

He reaches town at nightfall –
He stops at every door –
Who looks for him at morning
I pray him too — explore
The Lark’s pure territory –
Or the Lapwing’s shore!

All overgrown by cunning moss,
All interspersed with weed,
The little cage of ‘Currer Bell,’
In quiet Haworth laid.

This bird, observing others,
When frosts too sharp became,
Retire to other latitudes,
Quietly did the same,

But differed in returning;
Since Yorkshire hills are green,
Yet not in all the nests I meet
Can nightingale be seen.

Gathered from many wanderings,
Gethsemane can tell
Through what transporting anguish
She reached the asphodel!

Soft fall the sounds of Eden
Upon her puzzled ear;
Oh, what an afternoon for heaven,
When ‘Bronte’ entered there!

Before the ice is in the pools,
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow,

Before the fields have finished,
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!

What we touch the hems of
On a summer’s day;
What is only walking
Just a bridge away;

That which sings so, speaks so,
When there’s no one here, –
Will the frock I wept in
Answer me to wear?

Tie the strings to my life, my Lord,
Then I am ready to go!
Just a look at the horses –
Rapid! That will do!

Put me in on the firmest side,
So I shall never fall;
For we must ride to the Judgment,
And it’s partly down hill.

But never I mind the bridges,
And never I mind the sea;
Held fast in everlasting race
By my own choice and thee.

Good-by to the life I used to live,
And the world I used to know;
And kiss the hills for me, just once;
Now I am ready to go!

The bat is dun with wrinkled wings
Like fallow article,
And not a song pervades his lips,
Or none perceptible.

His small umbrella, quaintly halved,
Describing in the air
An arc alike inscrutable, –
Elate philosopher!

Deputed from what firmament
Of what astute abode,
Empowered with what malevolence
Auspiciously withheld.

To his adroit Creator
Ascribe no less the praise;
Beneficent, believe me,
His eccentricities.

Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
She felled — he did not fall –
Impaled him on her fiercest stakes –
He neutralized them all.

She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
But, when her worst was done,
And he, unmoved, regarded her,
Acknowledged him a man.

According to the Dublin Evening Herald, people waiting at the Naas Hospital Kildare and other places around the region will have the chance to read a little poetry instead of just out-of-date celebrity rags and old medical journals.

Poems in the Waiting Room is a pilot arts project funded by Kildare County Council. The idea was driven by Kildare-based writer Kate Dempsey.

It was inspired by pieces of public sculpture dotted across the country. The idea is to make poetry an art form that is available in ordinary everyday places.

The project has a web site, too, from which you can download a poster-sized version of Dickinson’s “Hope,” watch Alan Rickman recite Shakespeare’s Sonnet 130 (“My mistress’ eyes are nothing like the sun”), or read Leigh Hunt’s Jenny Kissed Me, a sweet little poem about Thomas Carlyle’s wife.

Similar to the various poems-on-public-transit projects, like the recent Wilkes-Barrie Poetry in Transit or the famous Poems on the Underground in London, the Poems in the Waiting Room project seeks to slip poetry into the fallow spaces of our lives and enrich the unsuspecting with a few well-chosen words. Given the rate at which video monitors and loud music have colonized gas pumps and grocery-store lines, this incursion of verse is certainly welcome.