His face was lean, and some deal pined away And eke his hands consumed to the bone; But what his body was I cannot say, For on his carcase raiment had he none, Save clouts and patches pieced one by one; With staff in hand, and scrip on shoulders cast, His chief defence against the winter's blast: His food, for most, was wild fruits of the tree, Unless sometime some crumbs fell to his share, Which in his wallet long, God wot, kept he, As on the which full daint'ly would he fare; His drink, the running stream, his cup, the bare Of his palm closed; his bed, the hard cold ground: To this poor life was Misery ybound. Whose wretched state when we had well beheld, With tender ruth on him, and on his feres, In thoughtful cares forth then our pace we held; And, by and by, another shape appears Of greedy Care, still brushing up the briers; His knuckles knob'd, his flesh deep dinted in With tawed hands, and hard ytanned skin: The morrow gray no sooner hath begun To spread his light e'en peeping in our eyes, But he is up, and to his work yrun; But let the night's black misty mantles rise, And with foul dark never so much disguise The fair bright day, yet ceaseth he no while, But hath his candles to prolong his toil. By him lay heavy Sleep, the cousin of Death, Flat on the ground, and still as any stone, A very corpse, save yielding forth a breath; Small keep took he, whom Fortune frowned on, Or whom she lifted up into the throne Of high renown, but, as a living death, So dead alive, of life he drew the breath: The body's rest, the quiet of the heart, The travel's ease, the still night's fere was he, And of our life in earth the better part; Riever of sight, and yet in whom we see Things oft that [tyde] and oft that never be; Without respect, esteeming equally King Croesus' pomp and Irus' poverty. And next in order sad, Old Age we found: His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind; With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, As on the place where nature him assign'd To rest, when that the sisters had untwined His vital thread, and ended with their knife The fleeting course of fast declining life: There heard we him with broke and hollow plaint. Rue with himself his end approaching fast, And all for nought his wretched mind torment With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past. And fresh delights of lusty youth forewaste; Recounting which, how would he sob and shriek, And to be young again of Jove beseek! But, an the cruel fates so fixed be That time forepast cannot return again, This one request of Jove yet prayed he That in such wither'd plight, and wretched pain, As eld, accompanied with her loathsome train, Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief, He might a while yet linger forth his life,