Dame Blanch seemed undisposed to mirth. “We have slain the stag, beau sire,” she said, “and have made of his death a brave diversion. To-day we have had our sport of death,—and presently the gay years wind past us, as our cavalcade came toward the stag, and God’s incurious angel slays us, much as we slew the stag. And we shall not understand, and we shall wonder, as the stag did, in helpless wonder. And Death will have his sport of us, as if in atonement.” Her big eyes shone, as when the sun glints upon a sand-bottomed pool. “Ohé, I have known such happiness of late, beau sire, that I am hideously afraid to die.”
The King answered, “I too have been very happy of late.”
“But it is profitless to talk about death thus drearily. Let us flout him, instead, with some gay song.” And thereupon she handed Sire Edward a lute.
The King accepted it. “Death is not reasonably mocked by any person,” Sire Edward said, “since in the end he conquers, and of the lips that gibed at him remains but a little dust. Rather should I, who already stand beneath a lifted sword, make for my destined and inescapable conqueror a Sirvente, which is the Song of Service.”
Sang Sire Edward:[3]
“I sing of Death, that comes unto the king,
And lightly plucks him from the cushioned throne;
And drowns his glory and his warfaring
In unrecorded dim oblivion;
And girds another with the sword thereof;