Story No. 5

There was a young man in our circle of pleasure: quick, gentle, laughing, sweet of tongue. No sorrow of any kind ever entered his heart, and his lips never closed from smiling. A stretch of time passed with no chance to meet. When I saw him again, he had taken a wife and raised children; the root of his joy was severed, and the flower of his desire had wilted. I asked him: how are you, and what is your state? He said: since I began raising children, I have played the child no more. What place has youthful play now that gray has changed the hair at my temples? The changing of the times is warning enough. Once you have grown old, give up childish ways; leave games and light banter to the young. Do not look for a youth's merriment in an old man, for the water that has run past will not come back to the stream. When the crop has reached its time for harvest, it no longer sways like fresh young grass. The season of my youth has slipped from my hands. Alas, and how I grieve for those heart-brightening days. The strength of a lion's paw is gone; now I am content, like a leopard, with a scrap of cheese. An old woman had dyed her hair black. I said: my dear old auntie of many years, suppose you have tricked your hair into looking black, this bent old back of yours will never straighten again.