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 hand; for thy end is come, and it is deemed, and therefore it must be done."

O my God shall I now needs die? May not this sentence be changed? Shall I now so soon go from this world? O the great cruelty of death. Spare, I pray thee, to the youth, spare to the age that is not yet fully ripe. Do not so cruelly with me. Withdraw me not so unpurveyed from the light of life.

The Disciple, hearing these words, turned to him and said:

Disciple

Friend thy words seem to me not savouring of discipline. Wot thou not that the doom of death is given to all men, for it taketh no person afore other and it spareth no man; and it hath no mercy neither of young nor old. It slayeth as well the rich as the poor; and sooth it is that right many, before the perfect fulfilling of their years, be drawn away from this life. Trowest thou that death should have shared thee alone? Nay, for the prophets be dead.

The Likness, or Image of Death, answered and said

Soothly, he said, thou art an heavy comforter for my words sound not to wisdom, but rather they be like to fools; the which have lived evil unto their death, and have wrought those things that be worthy