Living and loving and dying,
Life is complete in the three.
Smiling or sobbing or sighing,
Which is for you or for me?
Hoping and struggling and striving,
Dreaming success by and by;
But whether we're driven or driving,
We live and we love and we die.

Aiming and hitting and missing,
Life is complete in the three.
The fickle world praising or hissing,
Which is for you or for me?
Striding or limping or creeping,
Time drives us heartlessly by;
Meeting and parting and weeping,
We live and we love and we die.

Yearning, rejoicing, and mourning,
Life is complete in the three.
Sackcloth or garland adorning,
Which is for you or for me?
The web of our little day, stretched,
Meshes a sob or a sigh;
Joyful or joyless or wretched,
We live and we love and we die.

Wishing and fearing and fretting,
Life is complete in the three.
The world's remembrance or forgetting,
Which is for you or for me?
Gnarled and knotted and tangled
The skeins of our little lives lie;
Mud-spattered or jewel-bespangled,
We live and we love and we die.