Then Beauty bade to blow retreat, Τ “Madam,” quoth I, "sith that this day "I yield to you without delay, "And sith that I have been the mark 2 The aged Lover renounceth Love.* I loath that I did love In youth that I thought sweet, My lusts they do me leave, My fancies all be 3 fled; 1 Fetch, Ed. 1567, "set.” 2 Work. * The editor of Reliques of Anc. Poetry has given some different readings in this poem, from a MS. in the Museum. Vide II. 186. 3 So ed. I.-Ed. 1567, "are." And tract of time begins to weave Gray hairs upon my head. For Age with stealing steps Hath claw'd me with his crowch, My Muse doth not delight Me, as she did before: My hand and pen are not in plight For Reason me denies This youthly idle Rhyme; And day by day to me she cries, "Leave off these toys in time." Say, limping Age will hedge1 him now, Where Youth must give him place. The harbinger of Death To me I see him ride: The cough, the cold, the gasping breath Doth bid me to provide So ed. I.-Ed. 1567, "lodge." A pick-axe and a spade, And eke a shrouding-sheet, A house of clay for to be made For such a guest most meet. Methinks I hear the clerk, That knolls the careful knell ; And bids me leave my woful wark Ere Nature me compel. My keepers knit the knot That Youth did laugh to scorn, Of me that clean shall be forgot, As I had not been born. Thus must I Youth give up, Lo here the bared' scull! For Beauty with her band These crooked cares hath wrought, 1 Ed. 1567, "barehead." And shipped me into the land And ye that 'bide behind, Have ye none other trust! Of a contented Mind. [From the Paradise of Dainty Devices; ed. 1576. Each of the following stanzas is printed as four lines in the original.] WHEN all is done and said, In th' end thus shall you find; To deem can be content The sweetest time in all his life The body subject is To fickle Fortune's power, Is casual every hour: And death in time doth change It to a clod of clay; When as the mind, which is divine, Companion none is like Unto the mind alone; For many have been harm'd by speech, Our wealth leaves us at death; But virtues of the mind unto The heavens with us we have. Wherefore, for virtue's sake The sweetest time of all my life To deem in thinking spent. |