Four Last Songs

What is a song cycle? a song cycle is a group of songs that the composer made specifically relevant to one another
In the song cycle by Richard Strauss Four Last Songs the overall theme throughout the four poems is the cycle of life and death and how after every death there is hope for life “”two larks soar alone “ the larks symbolize the path that we walk and the life we all live but it is also a bird of mourning I feel like this dude was severely depressed and doesn’t know how to see the light in life. The lark sings at the end of the day and he asks the question “is this perchance death?” I feel like this is not exactly hinting at the fact that they are dying but that the night symbolized the illusion of death to that particular day so that its not death to life its death to the day so that there may be a birth to a new morning . I don’t feel like the question makes anything more powerful just more symbolic.