Arts & Sciences
Two Enigmas
From New Poems (1896)
Name any gentleman you spy.
And there's a chance that he is I.
Go out to angle, and you may
Catch me on a propitious day.
Booted and spurred, their journey ended,
The weary are by me befriended.
If roasted meat should be your wish,
I am more needful than a dish.
I am acknowledgedly poor;
Yet my resources are no fewer
Than all the trades -- there is not one
But I profess, beneath the sun.
I bear a part in many a game;
My worth may change, I am the same:
Sometimes, by you expelled, I roam
Forth from the sanctuary of home.
II
Me you often meet
In London's crowded street,
And merry children's voices my resting-place proclaim.
Pictures and prose and verse
Compose me -- I rehearse
Evil and good and folly, and call each by its name.
I make men glad, and I
Can bid their senses fly,
And festive echoes know me of Isis and of Cam.
But give me to a friend.
And amity will end.
Though he may have the temper and meekness of a lamb.
Cite this poem
MLA
Rossetti, Christina. “Two Enigmas.” Poetry Codex, poetrycodex.com/poem/rossetti_c/446/.
Chicago
Rossetti, Christina. “Two Enigmas.” Poetry Codex. https://poetrycodex.com/poem/rossetti_c/446/.
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