I loathe that I did love,
   In youth that I thought sweet,
As time requires for my behove,
   Methinks they are not meet.
My lusts they do me leave,
   My fancies all be fled,
And tract of time begins to weave
   Grey hairs upon my head,
For age with stealing steps
   Hath clawed me with his crutch,
And lusty life away she leaps
   As there had been none such.
My Muse doth not delight
   Me as she did before;
My hand and pen are not in plight,
   As they have been of yore.
For reason me denies
   This youthly idle rhyme;
And day by day to me she cries,
   “Leave off these toys in time.”
The wrinkles in my brow,
   The furrows in my face,
Say, limping age will lodge 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 provide
A pickaxe 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 clark
   That knolls the careful knell,
And bids me leave my woeful 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,
   Whose badge I long did wear;
To them I yield the wanton cup
   That better may it bear.
Lo, here the barèd skull,
   By whose bald sign I know
That stooping age away shall pull
   Which youthful years did sow.
For beauty with her band
   These crooked cares hath wrought,
And shippèd me into the land
   From whence I first was brought.
And ye that bide behind,
   Have ye none other trust:
As ye of clay were cast by kind,
   So shall ye waste to dust.





















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