All things today seem sad, Since she has gone; My heart will not be glad, Altho’ I would not mourn For one as Heaven-born, But I’m alone!
Since she has gone I weep, The tears will flow; Vain tears—I would not keep Such signs of grief or woe, But she is gone!
Someone has died, and the speaker is left behind, finding that everything feels sad now that "she has gone." What makes the poem interesting is the tug-of-war inside it. The speaker keeps saying they shouldn't mourn, since the woman was "Heaven-born" and presumably better off. The tears are called "vain." The speaker even says they would rather not keep "such signs of grief or woe." Yet each time, the feeling wins out. The tears keep flowing, and the heart refuses to be glad.
The poem never tells us who the woman was, which lets the loss feel both personal and universal. The mood is quiet and weary, almost resigned. The short lines and plain, repeated words, "gone," "alone," "she has gone," sound like someone circling the same painful fact. The ending doesn't comfort. It just returns to the bare statement: "But she is gone!"