"Down by the Salley Gardens"

'She bid me take life easy, as the grass grows on the weirs;
But I was young and foolish, and now am full of tears.'
This excerpt from "Down by the Salley Gardens" seems to express a fear of death. The narrator is told to 'take life easy' but he does not heed the warning. He is 'young and foolish' and may think he is invincible. When faced with the inevitable death of another or himself, the narrator is 'full of tears' and unable to accept his own, or others', mortality.