Then spake Yamen, prophet of the Temple of Obin that stands on the
shores of a great lake, facing east. Yamen said: "I pray oft to the
gods who sit above the twilight behind the east. When the clouds are
heavy and red at sunset, or when there is boding of thunder or eclipse,
then I pray not, lest my prayers be scattered and beaten earthward. But
when the sun sets in a tranquil sky, pale green or azure, and the light
of his farewells stays long upon lonely hills, then I send forth my
prayers to flutter upward to gods that are surely smiling, and the gods
hear my prayers. But, O King, boons sought out of due time from the
gods are never wholly to be desired, and, if They should grant to thee
to tarry on the earth, old age would trouble thee with burdens more and
more till thou wouldst become the driven slave of the hours in fetters
that none may break."

The King said: "They that have devised this burden of age may surely
stay it, pray therefore on the calmest evening of the year to the gods
above the twilight that I may tarry always on the earth and always
young, while over my head the scourges of the gods pass and alight
not."

Then answered Yamen: "The King hath commanded, yet among the blessings
of the gods there always cries a curse. The great princes that make merry
with the King, who tell of the great deeds that the King wrought in the
former time, shall one by one grow old. And thou, O King, seated at the
feast crying, 'make merry' and extolling the former time shall find about
thee white heads nodding in sleep, and men that are forgetting the former
time. Then one by one the names of those that sported with thee once
called by the gods, one by one the names of the singers that sing the
songs thou lovest called by the gods, lastly of those that chased the