Final Poem Poem by Alice Duer Miller

The consciousness of my mortality
Which used to blind and limit all my life
Weighs on me not since I have been your wife.
Death is the price of our felicity;
And life eternal would not leave us free
To love each other thus, setting above
The grace of God, a common human love,
Untouched, unthreatened by any heaven to be.
For who, while waiting to be crowned a king
Can relish all the humble every day?
Who but must hasten when she sets a goal?
For me, I could not make our life a thing
So wise, so real, so tender and so gay
Had I this other care - to save my soul.