Thomas Vaux

Thomas Vaux, 2nd Baron Vaux of Harrowden KB (25 April 1509 – October 1556), English poet, was the eldest son of Nicholas Vaux, 1st Baron Vaux and his second wife, Anne Green, daughter of Sir Thomas Green, Lord of Nortons Green, and Joan Fogge. He was educated at Cambridge University. His mother was the maternal aunt of Queen Consort Katherine Parr, while his wife, Elizabeth Cheney, was her paternal cousin through Katherine's father's sister, Anne Parr.

Quotes

I loathe that I did love.

• I loathe that I did love,
    In youth that I thought sweet;
  As time requires, for my behove,
    Methinks they are not meet.
  * * *
  For age with stealing steps
    Hath clawed me with his clutch,
  And lusty life away she leaps,
    As there had been none such.
  • "The Aged Lover Renounceth Love" or "Dittye ... representing the Image of Death", sts. 1, 3, in Tottel's Miscellany (1557) and reprinted in Percy's Reliques (1765), vol. 1, p. 161
  • Garbled by the Gravediggers in Hamlet, act 5, sc. 1, 57–98: In youth, when I did love, did love, ...

• The harbinger of death,
    To me I see him ride;
  The cough, the cold, the gasping breath
    Doth bid me to provide
  A pickaxe and a spade,
    And eke a shrouding sheet,
  A house of clay for to be made
    For such a guest most meet.
  • "The Aged Lover Renounceth Love", sts. 7, 8

• When all is done and said, in the end thus shall you find,
  He most of all doth bathe in bliss that hath a quiet mind.
  • "Of a Contented Mind", st. 1, in A Paradise of Dainty Delights (1576), ed. Hyder Edward Rollins (1927)
  • Cp. Martial, 10, 47

• Our wealth leaves us at death, our kinsmen at the grave;
  But virtue of the mind unto the heavens with us we have.
  • "Of a Contented Mind", st. 4

• Is this a life? Nay, death you may it call,
  That feels each pain and knows no joy at all.
  • "No Pleasure without some Pain", refrain, in A Paradise of Dainty Delights (1576)

• Thou that didst grant the wise king his request,
  Thou that in whale thy prophet didst preserve,
  Thou that forgav'st the wounding of thy breast,
  Thou that didst save the thief in state to starve,
  Thou only good and giver of all grace,
  Forgive the guilts that grew in youth's green race.
  • [Untitled], st. 4, in The Arundel Harington Manuscript of Tudor Poetry, ed. Hughey (1960). A different version of the text is given in A Paradise of Dainty Delights (1576)