Sighing like furnace

Did you ever have the feeling that a monologue was stalking you?

…poetry is a communication from our home and solitude addressed to all intelligence. It never whispers in a private ear. Knowing this, we may understand those sonnets said to be addressed to particular persons, or “To a Mistress’s Eyebrow.” Let none feel flattered by them.

—Henry David Thoreau, “Friday,” A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers