So death takes those coins out to buy our speaker's life!
Guess we should've seen that coming. Taking lives is kind of death's MO.
It makes us wonder: what kind of currency is this? Who does death pay?
This line has a strange way of setting up life and death like a market place, a cycle of buying and selling.
The sound of the purse snapping shut is kind of terrifying. What might otherwise be an ordinary sound is amplified by the relation to death. Who would have thought a purse could sound so scary or so final?
Lines 5-6
when death comes like the measle-pox;
The re-imagining keeps going: now death's approach is like that of a disease, specifically the measle-pox.
We're starting to catch on that death can come in a number of ways. Big or small, slow or sudden, with or without suffering (death with the purse was scary, but didn't sound too painful; the measle-pox sounds like it might be a rather unpleasant way to go).