Dearest one, when I am dead Never seek to follow me. Never mount the quiet hill Where the copper leaves are still, As my heart is, on the tree

Then let them point my every tear, And let them mock and moan; Another week, another year, And I’ll be with my own Who slumber now by night and day

Go I must along my ways Though my heart be ragged, Dripping bitter through the days, Festering, and jagged. Smile I must at every twinge,

“It’s queer,” she said; “I see th… As plain as I beheld it then, All silver—like and calm and brigh… We’ve not had stars like that agai… ”And she was such a gentle thing

Oh, ponder, friend, the porcupine; Refresh your recollection, And sit a moment, to define His means of self-protection. How truly fortified is he!

I always say, I always said If I were grown and free, I’d have a gown of reddest red As fine as you could see, To wear out walking, sleek and slo…

If she had been beautiful, even, Or wiser than women about her, Or had moved with a certain defian… If she had had sons at her sides, And she with her hands on their sh…

Tonight my love is sleeping cold Where none may see and none shall… The daisies quicken in the mold, And richer fares the meadow grass. The warding cypress pleads the ski…

If wild my breast and sore my prid… I bask in dreams of suicide; If cool my heart and high my head, I think, ‘How lucky are the dead!…

So delicate my hands, and long, They might have been my pride. And there were those to make them… Who for their touch had died. Too frail to cup a heart within,

The day that I was christened– It’s a hundred years, and more!- A hag came and listened At the white church door, A-hearing her that bore me

My answers are inadequate To those demanding day and date And ever set a tiny shock Through strangers asking what’s o’… Whose days are spent in whittling…

This, no song of an ingénue, This, no ballad of innocence; This, the rhyme of a lady who Followed ever her natural bents. This, a solo of sapience,

Secrets, you said, would hold us t… You’d have me know of you your lea… And so the intimate places of your… Kneeling, you bared to me, as in c… Softly you told of loves that went…

Dear dead Victoria Rotted cosily; In excelsis gloria, And R. I. P. And her shroud was buttoned neat,