A Tangled Skein

She is weary of spinning thread, poor Clotho;

for my yarn of life confining, all my strings ‘round her binding, all her weaving e'er unwinding row by row.

But I hear her sister coming to help Clotho;

to take her from her weaving, give her rest from all her scheming and with pleasing swiftness strive to tame my rows.

Sweeter is Atropos than the skein!

Ah how feebly my threads resisted, I smoothed my lines and e'en assisted as she cut my strings from twisted, wild leads.

And she fixed me with her scissors like a star. Not a line was left unsettled, each had felt the bless'ed metal cut and tame my feral strings 'til none were marred.

When her pruning ceased my colors brightly shone. I radiated glory like early morn, my woven rows all adorn' with musical designs in gold and silver tone.

When evening came I watched their slumbers in dim light, and, I said, instead of weeping as fate keeps flit and fleeting, here I'll watch my mistresses sleeping every night.

But when morning came its sunbeams softly shone; in rows once neatly braided, I saw how jaded, old and colorless and faded I had grown.

Not a hint of beauty still remained, not a one; from my pattern no splendor started, all my luster had departed, and I lay pale and broken hearted in the sun.

Still I said, the skein is better than refrain; though my radiance may forsake me, to their weaving they will take me, and with patient fingers make me young again.

Lachesis took me... gazed a second... half a sigh...

and with a heart that had so hardened, without ever asking pardon, she threw me to the garden and left me there to die.

There I lay beneath their window in a swoon. Till the earthworm o'er me was trailing did I wake at twilight's failing, revealing lonely crickets wailing to the moon.

But I hear the storm winds stirring in their lair. I know they soon will lift me in their giant arms and sift me into ashes as they drift me through the air.

So I pray the fates show mercy and take my heart of hearts, or near it, my last living thread and bear it to their skein and bid them weave it for my sake.