Classic Poem

I will not say a word to let them know
I know you dead. Not any word at all,
Except a strained pale one of thus and so —
Some path we loved, some flower at a wall.
And if folk notice this, as folk may do,
Then they will say: " She is too busy now,
Or else too light, or else grief is so new,
No more than the vague brushing of a bough. "
I will not let them know that you are dead,
But set my looks by theirs, and toil and try
To make my every speech gleam like a star,
Or wrap each word in gilt to hide its lead.
They shall not know how stripped a thing am I,
Unroofed, unharbored, clinging to a spar!