Blighted rose and perfect shall commingle
In one excellence of garden mould.
Soul transfusing comeliness or blemish
Can alone lend beauty to the old.

While the streams go down among the mountains,
Gathering rills and leaving sand behind,
Till at last the ocean sea receives them,
And they lose themselves among their kind,

Man, the joy-born and the sorrow-nurtured,
(One with nothingness though all things be,--
Great lord Sirius and the moving planets
Fleet as fire-germs in the torn-up sea,--)

Linked to all his half-accomplished fellows,
Through unfrontiered provinces to range,
Man is but the morning dream of nature
Roused by some wild cadence weird and strange.

Slowly therefore, Niccolo, and softly,
With more memories than tongue can tell,
Lower me down the slope of life, and leave me
Knowing the hereafter will be well.

Close with, "Love is but the perfect knowledge,
The one thing no failure can befall;
Lovingkindness betters loving credence;
Love and only love is best of all."