’Stoin’d and amazed at his own shade for dread
And fearing greater dangers than he need.
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 assigned
To rest, when that the sisters had untwined
His vital thread, and ended with their knife
The fleeting course of fast-declining life.
These stanzas are from the Induction. Or take the following from the Complaint of the Duke of Buckingham: