We can read Pulter’s poem as a kind of answer to this riddle in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, by which the Clown “proves” Olivia is a fool because she mourns for her brother’s soul although she believes it to be in heaven. This exchange dismisses the possibility that one might devoutly believe in heaven and in resurrection but grieve just the same because what one mourns is the presence of the dead person in one’s own daily life. This is a grief Shakespeare’s play moves quickly past; in this very scene, the plot pulls Olivia out of her mourning and into courtship and marriage. In contrast, Pulter’s poem makes it clear that the speaker mourns not the soul but the living person who, even if in heaven, is lost to her in this life, as are, as a consequence, most of the joys of earthly life.