The Aged Lover Renounceth Love
- 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
- Gray 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 to 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 bared 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 shipped 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.
- Thomas, Lord Vaux
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