Edgar Allan Poe: Poems of Edgar Allan Poe

14. AN ENIGMA

"Seldom we find," says Solomon Don Dunce,
    "Half an idea in the profoundest sonnet.
Through all the flimsy things we see at once
    As easily as through a Naples bonnet -
    Trash of all trash! - how can a lady don it?
Yet heavier far than your Petrarchan stuff-
Owl-downy nonsense that the faintest puff
    Twirls into trunk-paper the while you con it."
And, veritably, Sol is right enough.
The general tuckermanities are arrant
Bubbles - ephemeral and so transparent -
    But this is, now, - you may depend upon it -
Stable, opaque, immortal - all by dint
Of the dear names that lie concealed within 't.

1847