God give me work, till my life shall end And life, till my work is done.

The couplet is a compact prayer for vocation and endurance. It reverses the usual hierarchy—life as the precondition for work—by asking for work as the sustaining meaning of life, and then for life only insofar as it enables the completion of that work. The balance of the two lines suggests an ethic of service: labor is not merely employment but a calling, and longevity is valued not for its own sake but for the good one can still accomplish. Read as an epitaph, it casts death not as defeat but as the natural boundary of a life spent in purposeful effort.