The Aged Lover Renounceth Love

I loathe that I did love, In youth that I thought sweet; As time requires for my behove, Me thinks 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 hedge 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. Me thinks I hear the clerk That knolls the careful knell, And bids me leave my woeful work 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.