University of Virginia Library

Then those two Gods, that came
Together, like a flame
Of war intense,
Thinking to end their strife
And solve the struggle for omnipotence
With one great effort, saw
These two, as different
As Death and Life,
That, natheless, side by side,
In amity did glide
And at the last their murmuring currents blent
In all delight of peace;
And with that fair fulfilment of God's law
Of natural harmony ravished, they did cease
To breathe out flame and war:
Each for awhile gave o'er
His enmity and gazed
Into his fellow's eyes with mind perplexed,
Half vexed
With some old remnant of despite
And half amazed
With a new sense of right
And possibility:
And each could see
The nascent softness of a new desire,
Dim-radiant within
The other's eyes,
For rest from all the din
And weariness of strife.

Then, on this wise,
After a resting-while,
Unto the frosty sire
Spake, with a dawn-sky's smile,
The great God Life,
Saying, “My brother,
What boots it that so long
We have done hurt unto each other
And to the world
And have so often and so sore wrought wrong
To the sad race of men,—that we have hurled
The fair sky-orders from their base with fight,
So I, a God, of thee, another God
As great, might have the mastery?
Now, of a truth, I see
That we are surely equal in our might
And all these years have trod
The battle all in vain;
For Death and Life must be
And may not change or wane
Nor the one have domain
Over the other's fee.
Wherefore I pray of thee that we do take
Joined hands once more
And make
A thing that shall be for a covenant
Betwixt us against war
And lawless strife;
A thing that shall of both our souls partake
And all our attributes
Shall share,
As a fair tree that, by the gardener's knife
Graffed to a plant of various kind, doth bear
Twy-natured fruits;
A thing that shall be sad as violets' breath
And blithesome as the breeze
That in the Spring
Among the blossomed trees
Doth float and sing;
That shall be sadder and more sweet than Death
And gladder and more sweet than Life,
That as a king betwixt us twain shall sit
And with flower-bands
Linking our hands,
Shall lead us forth upon our various way,
As two fair twins that play
With joinéd hearts and lives together knit
And have no thought of harm.”
And so the pact was sworn between the two,
That they should work to do
This charm;
And Life and Death clasped hands on it.