Morcup, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Dear Readers, I have spent most of today in bed alternately baking and shivering with a touch of coughing thrown in. Definitely contacting the doctor on  Monday unless there’s a miraculous recovery tomorrow. But in the meantime, the last line of this poem has been playing in my head all day, so here it is. The obituary for my friend Ann was published in our local paper, The Archer, today, and although Ann was far from a shy woodland creature, she loved this poem…

She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways

By William Wordsworth

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and, oh,
The difference to me!