This remarkable poem was written by the Dutch poet and novelist Elizabeth Wolff-Bekker (1738-1804) and addressed to her bosom friend Agatha Deken (1741-1804). The poem strikes me because it uses the apostrophe to create a highly dramatic present moment: while Deken is addressed – we ‘overhear’ Elizabeth's outburst of shock – death strikes. The moment of address and the moment of dying almost coincide. Elizabeth's husband, the elderly reverend Wolff, passes away in l. 3: ‘[…] he dies, he falls into my arms! – I can / Not write now! – Heavens! Why was no one there with me?’ In l. 5, a flashback begins in which the ‘I’ relates the brief process of his falling ill:

It is told in the present tense, which creates the sensation that we are standing in the very room when death strikes. One imagines the astonishment of the lyrical ‘I’: her being taken by surprise is expressed in the present tense. This effect is also reached by an embedded second apostrophe: while recounting Wolff's rapid deterioration, the lyrical ‘I’ addresses him: ‘“Wolff, my dear! / Oh, can't you see, my love? It's me!” But he was gone.’ (ll. 10-11).

The apostrophe cannot keep the reverend alive. This part of the poem shows to what extent narrative can be embedded in a lyrical text without destroying the structure of address that Northrop Frye and Jonathan Culler among others rightly declare typical for poetry. The recounting of events is only a short interruption of a repeated apostrophizing, taken up again in the following line: ‘Just think, my friend, just think how I was seized with fear!’ The danger that narrative would take over, reducing the poem to a story, is thus countered by a corset of apostrophes, strengthening time and again the apostrophic nature of this text.