DEATH.

———

BY MRS. C. H. W. ESLING.

———

Death came to a beautiful boy at play,

As he sat ’mong the summer flowers,

But they seem’d to wither and die away

In their very sunniest hours.

“I have come,” in a hollow voice, said Death,

“To play on the grass with thee;”

But the boy look’d frighten’d, and held his breath,

In the midst of his childish glee.

“Away, away from my flowers,” he said,

“For I know, and love thee not”—

Death look’d at the boy, and shook his head:

Then slowly he left the spot.

He met a maiden in girlhood’s bloom,

And the rose on her cheek was bright,

And she shuddered, as tho’ a ghost from the tomb

Had risen before her sight.

She stood by the brink of a fountain clear—

In its waters her beauty view’d,

When Death, with his haggard face, drew near,

And before the maiden stood.

“Fair damsel,” he said, with a courtly pride,

“To thee I this goblet quaff,”

But she turned with a buoyant step aside,

And fled with a ringing laugh.

He journey’d on, where an old man sat

On the trunk of a worn-out tree—

A poor old man—for his held-out hat

Was a symbol of beggary.

Death drew quite near, till the old man’s eyes

Were raised to his wrinkled face;

With a frighten’d look of wild surprise,

He rose from his resting-place.

“I come to succor,” Death mildly said,

But the old man would depart—

Again he look’d, and shook his head,

For he knew full well his mart.

“They all of them, shuddering, turn away—

The boy in his childish glee,

The maiden young, and the old man gray:

Yet they all shall come to me.”

And he gather’d them all, for the boy was weak—

The old man yielded his breath—

And the rose grew pale on the maiden’s cheek,

As she sank in the arms of Death.