And Death is the glad clasp of knotted braids;
Death seals the circlet, that Life gradual twines;
In all that’s fair, Death, inartistic, trades;
Beauty he saps, beleaguering Youth with mines;
O, art thou usher to a fuller world,
Grim Death, whose smile is cased in a frown?
Or speak’st thou only to an infant curl’d,
Dreaming a moment in a bed of down?
Stalk not too proudly, ravisher of life,
Thy boast shall reach no pearl in Nature’s casket;
What sinks, benumb’d, though lovely, in the strife
Shall cast the slough, that could a moment mask it.
I cannot wholly hate nor love thee, Death,
Thou tak’st my life, but robb’st my friend of breath.