We're tapers too, and at our own cost die,

And we in us find th' eagle and the dove. The phoenix riddle hath more wit By us; we two being one, are it;

So, to one neutral thing both sexes fit. 25
We die and rise the same, and prove
Mysterious by this love.

We can die by it, if not live by love,
And if unfit for tomb or hearse
Our legend be, it will be fit for verse; 30
And if no piece of chronicle we prove,

We'll build in sonnets pretty rooms;
As well a well-wrought urn becomes
The greatest ashes, as half-acre tombs,
And by these hymns all shall approve 35
Us canonized for love;

And thus invoke us, 'You, whom reverend love

Made one another's hermitage;

You, to whom love was peace, that now

I long to talk with some old lover's ghost Who died before the god of love was born.

I cannot think that he who then loved most