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D.H. Lawrence wrote "Ship of Death" when he was dying of tuberculosis. If this was not the very last poem he ever wrote, it was one of the very last. He died in 1930; the poem was published posthumously three years later.

This being National Poetry Month, and "Ship of Death" being one of my favorite poems ever, I decided to illustrate it.

I am putting the illustrations in here because I used "Magister" and "ancilla" to illustrate some of the stanzas, and some of the tiles use recycled images from the Netzach chapter in Ancilla. I think the motifs in the poem correspond to some of the material from "Hod," "Netzach," and "Tiphareth." It's a poem about the old self dying, and a new self rising from the abandoned remains of the old self. Some people interpret this as reincarnation; others as transition and change; still others as what to expect in the world to come. 

I'll leave the interpretation up to the individual reader. I am no expert. 

The other reason I used "Magister" and "ancilla" is that the Magnum Opus trilogy is my protagonist's memoirs, which she composes to her grand-niece (I guess that's what you would call the granddaughter of your sister-wife...) 

Ancilla focuses on her early life, her apprenticeship, and then her spiritual marriage to her Magister, and on the aftermath of his decision to free her to live her own life despite their marital bond. It's a book that primarily concerns itself with eros: romantic love. 

Soror Mystica focuses on her graduate studies at Case Western Reserve University and Oxford, on the close friendly love known as philia, on her early relationship with the man she calls "zed" (who eventually becomes her slave), on her relationship with the woman "zed" winds up marrying (I don't have a nickname for her yet), and on her close relationships with her college friends. She and "zed" wind up in a polyamorous love dodecahedron that "Magister" would be very relieved to not be involved in. Too much drama for him. 

Adept spans several decades and concerns itself with the way "zed," his wife, and their children become the family that "ancilla" has always needed. The main focus of Adept is storge - familiar love. Also, a key focus in Adept is how older people experience love and desire - these are not things that are limited to young people. (Some of my strong opinions might be due to the fact that I am in my mid-fifties and am going through menopause). "Ancilla" gets to reconnect with "Magister" in this book, as well. Necromancy is involved since she's romancing his ghost, but still, it's a reconnection.

I don't think I'm spoiling too much to point out that if my protagonist is in her nineties when she writes her memoirs, a key element of the Magnum Opus trilogy is that all the main characters in it die, including my protagonist. Most die of old age.

"Magister" is "ancilla's" psychopomp when she dies; he conducts her to their afterlife. They have the ultimate happily ever after. It's a long wait, but from the perspective of a disembodied soul who lives outside of time and space, the wait is but an eyeblink. 

Who better to illustrate "Ship of Death" than they?