Edmund Spenser

“ All for their master is lustless and old.
THE. Cuddie, I wot thou kenst little good,
So vainly to advance thy heedlesshood;
For youth is a bubble blown up with breath,
Whose wit is weakness, whose wage is death,
Whose way is wilderness, whose inn penance,
And stoop-gallant Age, the host of Grievance.
But shall I tell thee a tale of truth,
Which I cond of Tityrus in my youth,
Keeping his sheep on the hills of Kent?
CUD. To nought more, Thenot, my mind is bent
Than to hear novels of his devise;
They be so well thewed, and so wise,
Whatever that good old man bespake. ”

“ It specially containeth a discourse of old age, in the person of Thenot, an old shepheard, who, for his crookedness and unlustiness, is scorned of Cuddie, an unhappy herdman’s boy. The matter very well accordeth with the season of the moneth, the year now drooping, and as it were drawing to his last age. For as in this time of year, so then in our bodies, there is a dry and withering cold, which congealeth the curdled blood, and freezeth the weather-beaten flesh, with storms of Fortune and hoar-frosts of Care. ”

“ The husbandman self to come that way,
Of custom for to surview his ground,
And his trees of state in compass round:
Him when the spiteful Brere had espied,
Causeless complained, and loudly cried
Unto his lord, stirring up stern strife:
“‘O my liege lord! the god of my life,
A Pleaseth you ponder your suppliant’s plaint,
Caused of wrong and cruel constraint,
Which I your poor vassal daily endure ”