All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. Political plots, terrorist plots, lovers’ plots, narrative plots, plots that are part of children’s games. We edge nearer death every time we plot. It is like a contract that all must sign, the plotters as well as those who are the targets of the plot.

Meaning: The rhyme makes a husband dread a clear, pleasant Candlemas as strongly as his wife’s death. It exaggerates the fear attached to a calendar-weather sign.

Meaning: The saying associates a hot May with a full churchyard. It makes a month’s warmth an ominous sign of deaths without providing a measured relationship.

Meaning: The timing of death cannot be treated as an appointment people can count on controlling. The calendar image expresses uncertainty about life’s duration, encouraging awareness of limits without making a prediction about any individual or demanding constant urgency.

Meaning: Death is imagined as unable to hear objections, so a protest cannot make it negotiate. The saying expresses mortality’s finality rather than a judgment about how someone should feel about loss.