the most commonplace maxims,—that of reflecting on them in direct reference to our own state and conduct, to our own past and future being." Mature and sedate wisdom has been fond of summing up the results of its experience in weighty sentences. Solomon did so; the wise men of India and Greece did so; Bacon did so; Goethe in his old age took delight in doing so. Lucretius has his philosophical view of Time, which Creech has thus Englished: Time of itself is nothing, but from Thought As present, some as past, or yet to come. No thought can think on Time, But thinks on things in motion or at rest. Ovid has some illustrations, which Dryden has thus translated: Nature knows No steadfast motion, but or ebbs or flows. Time is th' effect of motion, born a twin, And motion rest in everlasting sleep. Thy teeth, devouring Time! thine, envious Age! The comparison to a river is more amply developed by a modern poet: The lapse of time and rivers is the same: Both speed their journey with a restless stream; And a wide ocean swallows both at last. Though each resembles each in every part, A difference strikes, at length, the musing heart: An old playwright makes him a fisher by the stream: Hooks souls, while we waste moments. Horace has some lines, thus paraphrased by Oldham : Alas! dear friend, alas! time hastes away, 'Tis not thy piety can thee secure ; They're all too feeble to withstand Gray hairs, approaching age, and thy avoidless end. When once thy utmost thread is spun, "Twill then be fruitless to expect reprieve; Could'st thou ten thousand kingdoms give In purchase for each hour of longer life, They would not buy one gasp of breath, Nor move one jot inexorable death. Perhaps there is no illustration in our language more impressive than Young's noble apostrophe, commencing: The bell strikes one. We take no note of time But from its loss: to give it, then, a tongue I feel the solemn sound. If heard aright, It is the knell of my departed hours. Where are they? With the years beyond the flood. * * * * O time! than gold more sacred; more a load * Time's Beguilings. Youth is not rich in time; it may be poor; With holy hope of nobler time to come. But why on time so lavish is my song? On this great theme kind Nature keeps a school Throw years away! Throw empires, and be blameless: moments seize ; The period past, regive the given hour. O for yesterdays to come! 5 How exquisite is this beguiling of time in Paradise Lost. With thee conversing I forget all time; All seasons, and their change, all please alike. How beautifully has Burns alluded to these influences, in his "Lines to Mary in Heaven :" Time but the impression deeper makes, As streams their channels deeper wear. The Hon. W. R. H. Spencer has something akin to this in his "Lines to Lady A. Hamilton:" Too late I stay'd; forgive the crime; How noiseless falls the foot of Time Edward Moore, in one of his pleasing Sougs, thus points to these charming influences: Time still, as he flies, adds increase to her truth, And gives to her mind what he steals from her youth. The best lessons of life are to be learnt in his school: Taught by time, my heart has learn'd to glow For others' good, and melt at others' woe. How well has Shakspeare expressed this work of the great reconciler: Time's glory is to calm contending kings, To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light, To wake the morn, and sentinel the night, Elsewhere Shakspeare paints him as the universal balm: Cease to lament for that thou can'st not help, It is notorious to philosophers, that joy and grief can hasten and delay time. Locke is of opinion that a man in great misery may so far lose his measure, as to think a minute an hour; or in joy make an hour a minute. Shakspeare's "divers paces" of Time is too familiar for quotation here. Time's Garland is one of the beauties of Drayton's "Elysium of the Muses:" The garland long ago was worn As Time pleased to bestow it: The Laurel only to adorn The conqueror and the poet. When fate had done the worst it could, Most worthy of the Oaken wreath In some strong siege by th' enemy, A wreath of Vervains heralds wear, The sign of peace who first displays, In love the sad forsaken wight The Willow garland weareth; The funeral man, befitting night, To Pan we dedicate the Pine, Whose slips the shepherd graceth; Again the Ivy and the Vine On his front Bacchus placeth. Time's Mutations. 7 They who so stanchly oppose innovations, should remember Bacon's words: "Every medicine is an innovation, and he that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator; and if time of course alter things to the worse, and wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to the better, what shall be the end?" How much time has to do with our successes is thus solemnly told by the Preacher: "The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all."-Ecclesiastes ix. 11. How truthfully has Dr. Johnson said: "So little do we accustom ourselves to consider the effects of time, that things necessary and certain often surprise us like unexpected contingencies. We leave the beauty in her bloom, and, after an absence of twenty years, wonder, at our return, to find her faded. We meet those whom we left children, and can scarcely persuade ourselves to treat them as men. The traveller visits in age those countries through which he rambled in his youth, and hopes for merriment in the old place. The man of business, wearied with unsatisfactory prosperity, retires to the town of his nativity, and expects to play away the last years with the companions of his childhood, and recover youth in the fields where he once was young." Dr. Armstrong, the friend of Thomson, has left this solemn apostrophe on the Wrecks and Mutations of Time: What does not fade? the tower that long had stood Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time, Now hangs in doubtful ruins o'er its base, Till the Great Father, through the lifeless gloom, And bid new planets roll by other laws. |