Explore "The Explanation" by Rudyard Kipling on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Love and Death once ceased their strife / At the Tavern of Man's Life. / Called for wine, and threw -- alas! -- / Each his quiver on the grass. / When the bout was o'er they found / Mingled arrows strewed the ground. / Hastily they gathered then / Each the loves and lives of men. / Ah, the fateful dawn deceived! / Mingled arrows each one sheaved; / Death's dread armoury was stored / With the shafts he most abhorred; / Love's light quiver groaned beneath / Venom-headed darts of Death.
Thus it was they wrought our woe / At the Tavern long ago. / Tell me, do our masters know, / Loosing blindly as they fly, / Old men love while young men die?