His golden locks time hath to silver turned;
O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!
His youth ’gainst time and age hath ever spurned,
But spurned in vain; youth waneth by increasing.

The speaker laments the irresistible passage of time as it transforms youthful beauty (“golden locks”) into the visible marks of age (“silver”). The apostrophes—“O time too swift, O swiftness never ceasing!”—cast Time as an adversary whose speed makes resistance futile. The paradox “youth waneth by increasing” suggests that the very process of living and growing (increase in years, experience, stature) is what diminishes youth: to advance is to lose what one most wants to keep. The stanza belongs to a familiar Renaissance memento mori tradition, where physical change becomes a moral and emotional emblem of mortality and the limits of human pride.