What does one gain by living? What by dying Is lost worth having? What the daily things Lived through together make them worth the while For their sakes or for life's? Where's the denying Of souls through separation? There's your smile! And your hands' touch! And the long day that brings Half uttered nothings of delight! But then Now that I see you not, and shall again Touch you no more--memory can possess Your soul's essential self, and none the less You live with me. I therefore write to you This letter just as if you were away Upon a journey, or a holiday; And so I'll put down everything that's new In this secluded village, since you left. ... Now let me think! Well, then, as I remember, After ten days the lilacs burst in bloom. We had spring all at once--the long December Gave way to sunshine. Then we swept your room, And laid your things away. And then one morning I saw the mother robin giving warning To little bills stuck just above the rim Of that nest which you watched while being built, Near where she sat, upon a leafless limb, With folded wings against an April rain. On June the tenth Edward and Julia married, I did not go for fear of an old pain. I was out on the porch as they drove by, Coming from church. I think I never scanned A girl's face with such sunny smiles upon it Showing beneath the roses on her bonnet-- I went into the house to have a cry. A few days later Kimbrough lost his wife. Between housework and hoeing in the garden I read Sir Thomas More and Goethe's life. My heart was numb and still I had to harden All memory or die. And just the same As when you sat beside the window, passed Larson, the cobbler, hollow-chested, lamed. He did not die till late November came. Things did not come as Doctor Jones forecast, 'Twas June when Mary Morgan had her child. Her husband was in Monmouth at the time. She had no milk, the baby is not well. The Baptist Church has got a fine new bell. And after harvest Joseph Clifford tiled His bottom land. Then Judy Heaton's crime Has shocked the village, for the monster killed Glendora Wilson's father at his door-- A daughter's name was why the blood was spilled. I could go on, but wherefore tell you more? The world of men has gone its olden way With war in Europe and the same routine Of life among us that you knew when here. This gossip is not idle, since I say By means of it what I would tell you, dear: I have been near you, dear, for I have been Not with you through these things, but in despite Of living them without you, therefore near In spirit and in memory with you. * * * * *