A Bride Named Death

Of Rudyard Kipling's "Epitaphs of War",  The Bridegroom is one poem in particular which strikes my fancy.   Kipling effectively compares the narrator's "beloved" to the concept of death, employing personification to describe death, too, as a close lover.  The eerie terror of the notion put momentarily aside, I find this comparison quite poignant and precise.
"...this more ancient bride
Whom coldly I embrace
Was constant at my side
Before I saw thy face"

Were death a human being, would she not be a fellow's closest friend; closer, even, than a man's wife, lurking always over his shoulders?  And to marry death is to be removed from life:

"Our marriage, often set -
By miracle delayed"

"By miracle", the narrator throughout his life escaped his inevitable marriage to death, but as a result of participating in the war, was killed before he was able to wed his corporeal "beloved" ("From thy scarce-known breast / So little time removed, / In other arms I rest); sooner than he hoped.

However, the third stanza suggests that the death of the soldier results in a satisfactory form of marriage to his human bride, as he will, for the entire "Almost, of Memory", remain engaged to the woman, rendering their promise as "consummate", one that "cannot be unmade".