Classic Poem

Give store of days, good Jove, give length of years,
Are the next vows; these with religious fears,
And constancy we pay; but what's so bad,
As a long, sinful age? what cross more sad
Than misery of years? how great an ill
Is that, which doth but nurse more sorrow still?
It blacks the face, corrupts, and dulls the blood,
Benights the quickest eye, distates the food,
And such deep furrows cuts i'the chequered skin
As in the old oaks of Tabraca are seen.
Youth varies in most things; strength, beauty, wit,
Are several graces; but where age doth hit,
It makes no difference; the same weak voice,
And trembling ague in each member lies:
A general, hateful baldness, with a cursed
Perpetual pettishness; and which is worst,
A foul, strong flux of humours, and more pain
To feed, than if he were to nurse again.
So tedious to himself, his wife, and friends,
That his own sons, and servants, wish his end,
His taste, and feeling dies; and of that fire
The amorous lover burns in, no desire:
Or if there were, what pleasure could it be,
Where lust doth reign without ability?
Nor is this all, what matters it, where he
Sits in the spacious stage? who can nor see,
Nor hear what's acted, whom the stiller voice
Of spirited, wanton airs, or the loud noise
Of trumpets cannot pierce; whom thunder can
But scarce inform who enters, or what man
He personates, what 'tis they act, or say?
How many scenes are done? what time of day?
Besides that little blood, his carcass holds,
Hath lost its native warmth, and fraught with colds,
Catarrhs, and rheums, to thick, black jelly turns,
And never but in fits, and fevers burns;
Such vast infirmities, so huge a stock
Of sickness, and diseases to him flock,
That Hyppia ne'r so many lovers knew,
Nor wanton Maura; Physic never slew
So many patients, nor rich lawyers spoil
More wards, and widows; it were lesser toil
To number out what manors, and demesnes,
Licinius' razor purchased: one complains
Of weakness in the back, another pants
For lack of breath, the third his eyesight wants;
Nay some so feeble are, and full of pain,
That infant like they must be fed again.
These faint too at their meals; their wine they spill,
And like young birds, that wait the mother's bill
They gape for meat; but sadder far than this
Their senseless ignorance, and dotage is;
For neither they, their friends, nor servants know,
Nay those themselves begot, and bred up too
No longer now they'll own; for madly they
Proscribe them all, and what on the last day,
The misers cannot carry to the grave
For their past sins, their prostitutes must have.
But grant age lacked these plagues; yet must they see
As great, as many: frail mortality
In such a length of years, hath many falls,
And deads a life with frequent funerals.
The nimblest hour in all the span, can steal
A friend, or brother from's; there's no repeal
In death, or time; this day a wife we mourn,
Tomorrow's tears a son, and the next urn
A sister fills; long-livers have assigned
These curses still: that with a restless mind,
An age of fresh renewing cares they buy,
And in a tide of tears grow old and die.