How? Poem by Nellie Isabelle Steward Cooper

How can I give life to you
Whose secret heart I never knew?
The laments I drew
Were Scraps and seeming,
not
Verities; all dreaming (and)
False all I thought true

How with such
Bitter residue
In the dwindling few
Hours before dark
Construct a cameo
Of caring....?

Say
You loved -
you know not what

Certain and sure

True forever - that was not true

In truth.....

Braver than death
Stauncher than fate.....
But everything
Never or too late