And now, you are dead - being young and fair, you were of mortal birth. Your form was soft, your charms so rare; too soon they returned to Earth! Though the Earth welcomed you home again, and over your grave people easily walk, there is one person who cannot bear to look at that spot: me.
So I won't try to find where you lie dead, or even look at the Earth there; flowers might grow over it, but also perhaps ugly weeds, so I won't dare to find out. I do not need to see it; it's painful enough to know that the beautiful thing I loved so much, and will love for the rest of my life, can rot like any other common living thing. I do not need a formal gravestone to prove that I loved you so very much.
And yet, I did love you, until the very end, as fervently as you loved me - your love did not change in all the time we knew each other, and can never grow again, because you are dead. Death has made that certain; age will not change your love, a rival will not steal it from me, and no lies will deny it; but worst of all, you will no longer ever notice, or deny, or try to change anything about me; you will never again hold me to task for my own bad behaviour, because you are gone.
The best part of life belonged to us, and now, the worst part will be mine to bear alone. The sun that shone and the storm that blew are things you will never feel again. And I envy you, my love, the calm and dreamless sleep of death - I envy it too much to even cry. And yet I cannot yearn or despair that everything wondrous about you is gone, those things I might have watched slowly fade over time, had you lived a long life...
So fate goes, that the flower that is in youthful bloom must be the first to fall; but in time, the flower's leaves would fall, too. Perhaps it might have been a greater grief to watch you die slowly than to see you fall in the prime of your life; I'm not sure I could have stood it, to see you slowly fade into illness and pain, to see your beauty fade into wizened old age. But I'll never know, because your fair days have been cut short, and you were indeed lovely until the last breath. Your life was extinguished rather than slowly decayed; just like a comet, you burned fast and bright.
If I was still capable of shedding tears, I might cry that I was not able to protect you, that I am not able to stand vigil over your grave, or to gaze fondly on your beautiful face, to fold you into a tight embrace, and hold up your drooping head, and show you the feeling of love that, however vain and inadequate it was, neither of us will ever experience again.
So now, with you gone, I am free - but what a price it is to pay, what a terrible prize to win, because everything that remains alive reminds me of you! Therefore you can never truly die, will never truly be gone, because everything about you will remain with me for eternity. And what's more, your love is not truly gone, despite your death; it has transcended the years you lived and become a part of undying infinity.
This part feels so very Ellwood... self-loathing until the last. Trust him to think of his own inadequacies instead of letting himself grieve... we don't talk about the scene where he hugs West enough! He forgoes all etiquette and dives into West's arms - West, who he had once said would make snide comments about things like death and affection, make light of everything and tease Ellwood at school, and there he was, telling Ellwood not to blame himself for Gaunt's death, telling Ellwood to be kind to himself! And now, Ellwood misses Gaunt not just because he loves him, but because Gaunt would have held him to task as much as he would have told Ellwood to be kind to himself, too. He was an anchor in Ellwood's life, and now he is adrift.
