The Sealed Letter

Dedicated with love to my old friends

Gráinne Ní Dhúill and Debra Westgate

There are sealed pages in my heart,

Traced with illumined hand,

That none can see, and if they did,

Oh! who would understand?

But thou, by some strange sympathy,

Hast thrown a searching look,

And read at sight the hardest scroll

Indorsed within the book.

Eliza Cook,

"Stanzas, Addressed to Charlotte Cushman" (1851)