Thomas Bailey Aldrich's poem is dramatized in triptych. In the center panel, a young man muses on the seashore where mermaids beckon, then he walks through the woods, accompanied by Titania's fairy brood. He's then shown as a grown man, walking a city street where temptation and dissolution teem. Those images from his youth keep him away from sin. Then, alone in a bed sit, we see him old, with a bottle, despair, and fading memories. The fairies try a last visit. The words of Aldrich's poem appear above and below the triptych.