Death and birth should dwell not near together: <br />Wealth keeps house not, even for shame, with dearth: <br />Fate doth ill to link in one brief tether <br /> Death and birth. <br /> <br />Harsh the yoke that binds them, strange the girth <br />Seems that girds them each with each: yet whether <br />Death be best, who knows, or life on earth? <br /> <br />Ill the rose-red and the sable feather <br />Blend in one crown's plume, as grief with mirth: <br />Ill met still are warm and wintry weather, <br /> Death and birth.<br /><br />Algernon Charles Swinburne<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/death-and-birth/
