Oh sorrowful parting! Oh my life’s end!

My love, this leaving leaves me wintering;

what once was warmed a bitter wind now bends,

where joys grew all is bare and nothing sings.

I do not die and yet I live the sorrow

of that final leaving – I mean Death

whose curlew cries, curling and uncurling, follow

through the half-light calling on cold breath.

Deathless dying, sick child of this leaving,

why now mother pain and nourish sadness?

Why give them life by suckling them with tears

and so condemn my heart to wander here,

forever dying in this wilderness

and far away from her forever grieving?

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