Andrew, you were discussing "sentimentality" and the possibilities of emotion. I just found this stunning Edward THomas poem:

Rain

Rain, midnight rain, nothing but the wild rain
On this bleak hut, and solitude, and me
Remembering again that I shall die
And neither hear the rain nor give it thanks
For washing me cleaner than I have been
Since I was born into this solitude.
Blessed are the dead that the rain rains upon:
But here I pray that none whom once I loved
Is dying to-night or lying still awake
Solitary, listening to the rain,
Either in pain or thus in sympathy
Helpless among the living and the dead,
Like a cold water among broken reeds,
Myriads of broken reeds all still and stiff,
Like me who have no love which this wild rain
Has not dissolved except the love of death,
If love it be towards what is perfect and
Cannot, the tempest tells me, disappoint.

Janet,
Thanks for posting this beautiful poem. It brings to mind another point, I think, about sentimentality. One of the dangers people feel in it is that there is always some reminder of death in it (and therefore more inertia to overcome in the language that represents it in a poem). Our culture is famously death-denying (sanitized funeral homes and the like), and maybe our troubled relation to sentiment is connected to that.
Un saluto,
Andrew