(22)
ON A PARCEL OF OLD LOVE LETTERS.
They are both of them dead this many a year
And little would flinch for laug-hter of mine:
So why not loosen the tie in that twine
And read their rubbish without any fear?
That’s a word would wound the dead woman’s ear,
A word insulting to what is divine:
The letters shall stay; I’ll not read a line,
Where words meant so much to one that was dear.
Let them stay, faded and yellow and old,
Unpublish’d, unprinted, never more read,
Too sacred for glance of an alien’s eye;
Yet for me they have a value untold:
Though relics of two that long have been dead,
They’re full of a love that never can die.