Poems About Gossip

Table of Contents

1. A Word

   by Emily Dickinson

   A word is dead
   When it is said,
   Some say.
   I say it just
   Begins to live
   That day.
   

2. Reticence

   Admonished by her buckled lips
   Let every babbler be.
   The only secret people keep
   Is Immortality.
   

   – Emily Dickinson
   Reticence

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   by Emily Dickinson

   
   

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   The reticent volcano keeps
   His never slumbering plan;
   Confided are his projects pink
   To no precarious man.
   

   If nature will not tell the tale
   Jehovah told to her,
   Can human nature not survive
   Without a listener?
   

   Admonished by her buckled lips
   Let every babbler be.
   The only secret people keep
   Is Immortality.
   

3. Gossip

   The leaves, like women, interchange
   Sagacious confidence;
   

   – Emily Dickinson
   Gossip

   “

   by Emily Dickinson

   The leaves, like women, interchange
   Sagacious confidence;
   Somewhat of nods, and somewhat of
   Portentous inference,
   

   The parties in both cases
   Enjoining secrecy, —
   Inviolable compact
   To notoriety.
   

4. The Gossip

   by John B. Tabb

   So near me dwells my neighbor Death
   That e'en what Silence pondereth
   He catches word for word,
   And promises, some future day,
   To visit me upon his way,
   And tell what he has heard.
   

5. Truth Will Triumph

   by Colfax Burgoyne Harman

   
   

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   When gossips' talk and traitor's scheming,
   And jealous fiends on evil bent,
   With basest vices unredeeming,
   Brand the names of the innocent;
   

   When hope's bright sun seems nearly setting,
   The future dim and cloudy lies,
   And you more tired of life are getting,
   And tears of sorrow dim the eyes;
   

   Cheer up, take courage, do not falter,
   Truth will triumph by and by,
   Time all evil things will alter,
   Vice and wickedness must die.
   

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   Some men are not unlike the owl
   That base, wild-eyed, nocturnal fowl,
   That slays his victims in the night,
   And brings his deeds not unto light.
   

6. Lend a Hand

   Lend a hand to one another:
   When malicious tongues have thrown
   Dark suspicion on your brother,
   

   – Anonymous
   Lend a Hand

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   by Anonymous

   
   

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   Lend a hand to one another
   In the daily toil of life;
   When we meet a weaker brother,
   Let us help him in the strife.
   There is none so rich but may,
   In his turn, be forced to borrow;
   And the poor man's lot to-day
   May become our own to-morrow.
   

   Lend a hand to one another:
   When malicious tongues have thrown
   Dark suspicion on your brother,
   Be not prompt to cast a stone.
   There is none so good but may
   Run adrift in shame and sorrow.
   

   Lend a hand to one another:
   In the race for Honor's crown;
   Should it fall upon your brother,
   Let not envy tear it down.
   Lend a hand to all, we pray,
   In their sunshine or their sorrow;
   And the prize they've won today
   May become our own to-morrow.
   

7. Slander

   by Jean Blewett

   He does the devil's basest work, no less,
   Who deals in calumnies—who throws the mire
   On snowy robes whose hem he dare not press
   His foul lips to. The pity of it! Liar,
   Yet half believed by such as deem the good
   Or evil but the outcome of a mood.
   That one who, with the breath lent him by Heaven,
   Speaks words that on some white soul do reflect,
   Is lost to decency, and should be driven
   Outside the pale of honest men's respect.
   O slanderer, hell's imps must say of you:
   "He does the work we are ashamed to do!"
   

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