I want you to learn the lesson of the lotus. This flower springs forth from muddy waters. It raises its delicate petals to the sun and perfumes the world while, at the same time, its roots cling to the elemental muck, the very essence of the mortal experience. Without that soil, the flower would wither and die.

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.