Fable

They met beside a babbling stream, Old Death, young Love; Dawn threw its ochre-tinted gleam Through the leaves above. ‘Father, you look as sad as life,’ Said Love to Death. ‘Boy, keep your taunts for human strife, Nor waste your breath.’ He dipped his scythe in the crystal tide, Shook off the spray: ‘If youth for work has too much pride, Go on your way.’ Love bit the end of a blade of grass And bending low: ‘To-day you meet a pretty lass, Dear Death, I trow.’ The Mower chuckled: ‘She is fair, Fair as a flower. I shall be rich with golden hair Before an hour.’ ‘Some girl whose lot it was to pine, Drowned in a pool, Leaving her pale-faced babe to whine And grow ... a fool.’ ‘No forlorn girl, no treacherous smiles Of a passing churl; Her mother baffled all your wiles And kept the girl, Stainless for me to bear above In the month of May,’ Made answer Death to the stripling Love In the dawn of day. ‘Each mortal mother and mortal Eve They play our game, And we might sleep from morn till eve ’Twould be the same. Your tale, good sir, is very sad But hardly new.’ Old Death sat down beside the lad: ‘The tale is true, The house is near, around the door Vine branches creep....’ But ere the Wanderer could say more He fell asleep. So now the saucy imp was blithe; Holding his breath, The sable cloak and glittering scythe He took from Death And laugh gaily skipped away, Upon his quest. He pushed the door with vine leaves gay, The ghostly guest; The mother led him to the room With curtains blue, Where the girl was waiting for her doom And left the two. He sat him down beside the lass And took her hand, She smiled and thought that in the glass Would stop the sand. But he kissed her lips, the pretty lad, He kissed her eyes.... When came the Mower grim and sad To claim his prize-- Having at last from his trance awoke-- He found instead His scythe wrapt in his sable cloak On the silken bed.