Richard Crashaw offers a gentle consolation, turning death into a second wedding for a devoted couple. The epitaph insists that fate could divorce the soul from the body, but it was powerless against two people who shared a single life. There’s a quiet defiance in that thought, but the tone quickly softens. The speaker addresses us directly, urging us not to weep because the lovers are merely asleep, folded together like doves in the final embrace love could manage. The mood is hushed and tender, like a lullaby. It asks us to imagine them resting through a stormy night, waiting for an everlasting morning when curtains part and they wake to a day that never ends. Death becomes not an ending but a shared, restful pause before a permanent sunrise.
An Epitaph upon Husband and Wife — Summary
TO these whom death again did wed This grave 's the second marriage-bed. For though the hand of Fate could force 'Twixt soul and body a divorce, It could not sever man and wife, Because they both lived but one life. Peace, good reader, do not weep; Peace, the lovers are asleep. They, sweet turtles, folded lie In the last knot that love could tie. Let them sleep, let them sleep on, Till the stormy night be gone, And the eternal morrow dawn; Then the curtains will be drawn, And they wake into a light Whose day shall never die in night.