The poem opens with a question uttered by a deceased speaker lying within a grave: “‘Ah, are you digging on my grave / My loved one?—planting rue?’” (Lines 1-2). The first line sets a pattern for a refrain that will take slightly different forms in each stanza, with the speaker attempting to guess who the mystery visitor at her gravesite is. The speaker is then answered by the mystery visitor, who reveals the unfortunate truth about the person the speaker has mentioned. The speaker’s first guess is that her “loved one”—a romantic partner—has come to mourn and commemorate her, perhaps even planting the flower “rue” as a symbol of his sorrow. However, the mystery visitor reveals that the speaker’s beloved has recently “wed” (Line 3) another woman instead of remaining faithful to the dead speaker’s memory. The beloved justified his transfer of affections by reasoning that, since his former love is now deceased, “It cannot hurt her now [...] / That I should not be true’” (Lines 5-6). This indifference on the part of the beloved towards the deceased speaker is the first of several disillusionments the speaker will experience as the poem progresses.

In the second stanza, the same pattern plays out.