Status Updates From A Rose for Emily (Collected...

. . . but now the long sleep that outlasts love, . . .

. . . and the very old men --some in their brushed Confederate uniforms--on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, . . .

Thus she passed from generation to generation--dear, inescapable, impervious, tranquil, and perverse.

. . .her face like a strained flag.

When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad. At last they could pity Miss Emily. Being left alone, and a pauper, she had become humanized. Now she too would know the old thrill and the old despair of a penny more or less.

. . . lifting its stubborn and coquettish decay . . .

“None of the young men were quite good enough for Miss Emily and such. ... So when she got to be thirty and was still single, we were not pleased exactly, but vindicated; even with insanity in the family she wouldn’t have turned down all of her chances if they had really materialized.”

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