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Risk is the Hair that holds the Tun

Emily Dickinson

1239

Risk is the Hair that holds the Tun
Seductive in the Air—
That Tun is hollow—but the Tun—
With Hundred Weights—to spare—

Too ponderous to suspect the snare
Espies that fickle chair
And seats itself to be let go
By that perfidious Hair—

The “foolish Tun” the Critics say—
While that delusive Hair
Persuasive as Perdition,
Decoys its Traveller.
Online text © 1998-2008 Poetry X. All rights reserved.
From The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson | Written c. 1872
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