Page:The Folk-Lore Journal Volume 7 1889.djvu/206

182 peoples' deaths a memento sufficient to make yon think of your own? Your dim and hollow eyes methinks, the loss of your hearing, and the faltering of the rest of your senses, should mind ye, without more ado, that Death has laid hold of ye already; and is this a time of day, d' ye think, to stand shuffling it off still? Your peremptory hour, I tell ye, is now come, there is no thought of a reprieve in the case of Fate.

[Moral.] "Want of warning is no excuse in the case of Death; for every moment of our lives either is or ought to be a time of preparation for 't."

La Fontaine's fable of "La Mort et le Mourant" (bk. viii. fab. i.) may be compared with the above, together with the following metrical Latin fable, entitled:

Annos homo centum qui fere compleverat Demum advenire Mortem sensit; et, nimis Properanter illam sic agere secum, querens, Oravit, ut ne priùs obire cogerit, Perfecta quàm essent sua quædam negotia: