Love and Death

O Strong as the eagle,
O mild as the dove,
How like and how unlike
O Death and O Love!

Knitting earth to the heaven,
The near to the far,
With the step in the dust,
And the eye on the star.

Ever changing your symbols
Of light or of gloom;
Now the rue on the altar,
The rose on the tomb.

From Love, if the infant
Receiveth his breath,
The love that gave life
Yields a subject to Death.

When Death smites the aged,
Escaping above
Flies the soul re-deliver’d
By Death unto Love.

And therefore in wailing
We enter on life;
And therefore in smiling
Depart from its strife.

Thus Love is best known
By the tears it has shed;
And Death’s surest sign
Is the smile of the dead.

The purer the spirit,
The clearer its view,
The more it confoundeth
The shapes of the two;

For, if thou lov’st truly,
Thou canst not dissever
The grave from the altar,
The Now from the Ever;

And if, nobly hoping,
Thou gazest above,
In Death thou beholdest
The aspect of Love.