Robinson imagines Leonora’s grave as a small, carefully made room in the earth, lined with cedar and green as a hidden forest spirit. She is being laid to rest, and the speaker describes mourners bringing roses, pinks, and lilies. The tone is quiet and solemn but not merely sad. There is a strange comfort in the idea that death keeps her safe, preserving her beauty and sparing her from worse nights ahead. The flowers are almost duplicitous—lilies that pretend to promise purity, roses that follow their own nature—while the “wondrous quiet” of the grave feels more lasting. By the end, the builders of her tomb seem to know that whatever darkness she enters tonight, it is gentler than the darkness life might have held for her. The mood is elegiac, still, and faintly eerie.
Leonora — Summary
They have made for Leonora this low dwelling in the ground, And with cedar they have woven the four walls round. Like a little dryad hiding she’ll be wrapped all in green, Better kept and longer valued than by ways that would have been. They will come with many roses in the early afternoon, They will come with pinks and lilies and with Leonora soon; And as long as beauty’s garments over beauty’s limbs are thrown, There’ll be lilies that are liars, and the rose will have its own. There will be a wondrous quiet in the house that they have made, And to-night will be a darkness in the place where she’ll be laid; But the builders, looking forward into time, could only see Darker nights for Leonora than to-night shall ever be.