Tell Me Not

[Richard]

Hey Homer,
This is a a hard one for me. I find it a bit over sentimental, but the ending did have an affect on me as a reader. To me, that justifies some of the sentimentality. The only other thing that stands out to me besides that, is your use of repetition. I'll go into more detail below:

Tell me not your troubles -I understand that "Tell me not" is very important to the meaning of the poem, but I would be interested in seeing you trying to come up with different ways to word that. Or at the very least, think about changing the title to something different since you use the phrase so much throughout the poem.

and mine you shall not hear



Tell me not your sorrows 

and I will not shed one tear -The phrase "shed one tear" is not a full cliche, but is somewhat close to one. Maybe use a different word than "shed"?



Tell me not your gaities

and I will not smile -Is the lack of punctuation throughout this poem intentional?

Tell me not your dreams

and I will not be beguiled 



Tell me not your truths

and I will speak no lie -I know the repetition of "and" is done for effect. However, I think it's worth challenging yourself to edit this and use a different way to connect the lines.



Tell me not you love me
and I will surely die -Maybe I'm being sappy, but I like the ending. To me, the previous stanzas seem to be setting this up as a somewhat antagonistic relationship, and this ending packs extra punch because of that.

I think you have a decent first draft here, and you should definitely take the time to edit this.

Thanks for the read,
Richard