THE AGED LOVER.

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 are fled,

And track 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 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 clerk,

That knolls the careful knell,

And bids me leave my woeful work

Ere nature me compel.

My keepers knit the knot

My 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.

(Vaux.)

ELEGY.

P, then, Melpomene, the mournfullest
Muse of nine,

afore;

Such cause of mourning never hadst

Up, grisly ghosts, and up my rueful rhyme,
Matter of mirth now shalt thou have no more;
For dead she is that mirth thee made of yore.

Dido, my dear, alas! is dead,

Dead, and lyeth wrapt in lead.

O heavie hearse !

Let streaming tears be poured out in store;
O careful verse!

Shepherds, that by your flocks of Kentish downs abide,

Wail ye this woeful waste of Nature's work,

Wail we the wight whose presence was our pride,
Wail we the wight whose absence is our cark;

The sun of all the world is dim and dark,
The earth now lacks her wonted light,

And all we dwell in deadly night.

O heavy hearse !

Break we our pipes, that shrilled as loud as lark; O careful verse!

Whence is it, that the flow'ret of the field doth fade,

And lyeth buried long in winter's bale,

Yet soon as spring his mantle hath displayed,

It flowereth fresh, as it should never fail,

But thing on earth that is of most avail,

As Virtue's branch, and Beauty's bud,
Reliven not for any good?

O heavy hearse!

The branch once dead, the bud eke needs must quail;

O careful verse!

Ay me! that dreary Death should strike so mortal stroke,

That can undo Dame Nature's kindly course;

The faded locks fall from the lofty oak,

The floods do gasp, for dried is their source,

And floods of tears flow in their stead perforce;
The mantled meadows mourn,

Their sundry colours turn;