Stranger, pause and look; From the dust of ages Lift this little book, Turn the tattered pages, Read me, do not let me die! Search the fading letters finding Steadfast in the broken binding All that once was I!

One things there's no getting by, I've been a wicked girl, Says I... But, if I can't be sorry I might as well be glad !

I dread no more the first white in my hair, Or even age itself, the easy shoe, The cane, the wrinkled hands, the special chair: Time, doing this to me, may alter too My anguish, into something I can bear

And reaching up my hand to try, I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

This book, when I am dead, will be A little faint perfume of me. People who knew me well will say, She really used to think that way.

That which has quelled me, lives with me, Accomplice in catastrophe.

I am glad that I paid so little attention to good advice; had I abided by it I might have been saved from some of my most valuable mistakes.