Classic Poem

Time ! I ever must complaine
Of thy craft and cruell cunning;
Seeming fix'd here to remaine,
When thy feete are ever running;
And thy plumes
Still resumes
Courses new, repose most shunning.

Like calme winds thou passest by us;
Lin'd with feathers are thy feete;
Thy downie wings with silence flie us,
Like the shadowes of the night:
Or the streame,
That no beame
Of sharpest eye discernes to fleet.

Therefore mortals all deluded
By thy grave and wrinkled face,
In their judgements have concluded,
That thy slow and snaile-like pace
Still doth bend
To no end,
But to an eternal race.

Budding youth's vaine blooming wit
Thinks the spring shall ever last,
And the gaudie flowers that sit
On Flora's brow shall never taste
Winter's scorne,
Nor forlorne,
Bend their heads with chilling blast.

Riper age expects to have
Harvests of his proper toile,
Times to give, and to receive
Seedes and fruits from fertile soile;
But at length,
Doth his strength,
Youth and beauty all recoile.

Cold December hope retaines,
That the spring, each thing reviving,
Shall throughout his aged veines
Pour fresh youth, past joys repriving;
But thy sithe
Ends his strife,
And to Lethe sends him driving.