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Slow Movement

ALL those treasures that lie in the little bolted box whose tiny space is  
Mightier than the room of the stars, being secret and filled with dreams:  
All those treasures—I hold them in my hand—are straining continually  
Against the sides and the lid and the two ends of the little box in which I guard them;  
Crying that there is no sun come among them this great while and that they weary of shining;          
Calling me to fold back the lid of the little box and to give them sleep finally.  
 
But the night I am hiding from them, dear friend, is far more desperate than their night!  
And so I take pity on them and pretend to have lost the key to the little house of my treasures;  
For they would die of weariness were I to open it, and not be merely faint and sleepy  
As they are now.

The New Poetry: An Anthology. 1917.

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