Love and Death

Ever athwart Life's sunlit, upland ways Falleth the shadow of impending Death, And still Life's flowers beneath his blighting breath To ashes wither, and to dust, her bays. What were the worth of hard-won power or praise? Awaits us all the grave-cell dark and deep, The greedy grave-worm's maw, the awful sleep When Death his cold hand on our pulses lays. What then the end of action or of strife? The sphinxèd riddle of the Universe, Nature's unsolved enigma, who may prove? Life's Passion Play all blindly men rehearse.... But yet our recompense for birth, for life, For death itself, meseems, is deathless Love!