Love took the sordid clay
And pierced its grossness as with lustral fire,
Fashioned a spirit from the common earth,
And crowned him lord and king with tears and mirth:
Love took the sordid clay
And shaped it to the god of her desire.
Then, ere he could resign
His white divinity and fall away
From that ineffable, ideal height
Whereto he had been lifted by Love’s might
Ere he could so resign
His godhead and return again to clay,
Death took the god of Love--
The god that was but man ashine with gleams
From inner fires that Love’s own hands supplied--
And made him deathless who might else have died:
Death took the god of Love
And throned him in the heaven of her dreams.