The gateleg table — its hinged leaves supported by swinging leg-frames — appears in poems about the seventeenth and eighteenth century English interior as a practical solution to crowded, multi-purpose rooms; A poem about a yeoman farmer's hall might describe the gateleg table as the room's centre of gravity: "folded against the wall all week, then opened on Sunday like a declaration of plenty"; In a poem about domestic ingenuity, the gateleg table represents the craftsman's understanding that space is negotiable: "he cut the joints himself — the whole table folding and opening like a considered argument"; The gateleg's motion — the gate swinging out to support the fallen leaf — has a mechanical elegance that suits poems about things that do exactly what they should; In a poem about old age, a gateleg table inherited from a grandmother resists the modern flat: "too heavy to carry upstairs, too good to sell — it stands in the hall with its leaves down, waiting for a room large enough to open into"; A poem about the Civil War period might describe a gateleg table at which men argued and resolved: "the table open for the agreement, folded shut again before the outcome was known."