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Time.
ОглавлениеThe conventional personification of Time, with which every one is familiar, is the figure of Saturn, god of Time, represented as an old man, holding a scythe in his hand, and a serpent with its tail in its mouth, emblematical of the revolutions of the year: sometimes he carries an hour-glass, occasionally winged; to him is attributed the invention of the scythe. He is bald, except a lock on the forehead; hence Swift says: “Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take him (as we say) by the forelock; for when it is once passed, there is no recalling it.”
The scythe occurs in Shirley’s lines, written early in the seventeenth century:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Shakspeare prefers the scythe:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
The stealthiness of his flight is also told by Shakspeare:
Let’s take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and our quick’st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals ere we can effect them.
Mayne thus quaintly describes his flight:
Time is the feather’d thing,
And whilst I praise
The sparklings of thy locks, and call them rays,
Takes wing—
Leaving behind him, as he flies,
An unperceived dimness in thine eyes.
Gascoigne also thus paints the flight:
The heavens on high perpetually do move;
By minutes’ meal the hour doth steal away,
By hours the days, by days the months remove,
And then by months the years as fast decay;
Yea, Virgil’s verse and Tully’s truth do say,
That Time flieth, and never clasps her wings;
But rides on clouds, and forward still she flings.
Shakspeare pictures him as the fell destroyer:
Misshapen time, copesmate of ugly night;
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care;
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare:
Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are.
And Spenser brands him as
Wicked Time, that all good thoughts doth waste,
And workes of noblest wits to naught outweare.
The present section partakes much of the aphoristic character, which has its recommendatory advantages.—Bacon says: “Aphorisms representing a knowledge broken do invite men to inquire further; whereas methods, carrying the show of a total, do secure men as if they were at farthest.” Again: “Nor do apophthegms only serve for ornament and delight, but also for action and civil use, as being the edge-tools of speech, which cut and penetrate the knots of business and affairs.”
Coleridge is of opinion that, exclusively of the Abstract Sciences, the largest and worthiest portion of our knowledge consists of Aphorisms; and the greatest and best of men is but an Aphorism.
“Truths, of all others the most awful and interesting, are too often considered as so true, that they lose all the power of truth, and lie bedridden in the dormitory of the soul, side by side with the most despised and exploded errors.
“There is one way of giving freshness and importance to 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
Receives its rise, by lab’ring fancy wrought
From things consider’d, while we think on some
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.
Ever in motion, she destroys her old,
And casts new figures in another mould.
Even times are in perpetual flux, and run,
Like rivers from their fountains rolling on.
For Time, no more than streams, is at a stay,—
The flying hour is ever on her way;
And as the fountain still supplies her store,
The wave behind impels the wave before;
Thus in successive course the minutes run,
And urge their predecessor minutes on,
Still moving, ever anew; for former things
Are set aside, like abdicated kings;
And every moment alters what is done,
And innovates some act till then unknown.
* * * *
Time is th’ effect of motion, born a twin,
And with the worlds did equally begin:
Time, like a stream that hastens from the shore,
Flies to an ocean where ’tis known no more:
All must be swallow’d in this endless deep,
And motion rest in everlasting sleep.
* * * *
Time glides along with undiscover’d haste,
The future but a length behind the past,
So swift are years.
* * * *
Thy teeth, devouring Time! thine, envious Age!
On things below still exercise your rage;
With venom’d grinders you corrupt your meat,
And then, at ling’ring meals, the morsels eat.
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;
The silent pace with which they steal away,
No wealth can bribe, no prayers persuade to stay:
Alike irrevocable both when past,
And a wide ocean swallows both at last.
Though each resembles each in every part,
A difference strikes, at length, the musing heart:
Streams never flow in vain; where streams abound,
How laughs the land with various plenty crown’d!
But time, that should enrich the nobler mind,
Neglected, leaves a dreary waste behind.
An old playwright makes him a fisher by the stream:
Nay, dally not with time, the wise man’s treasure,
Though fools are lavish on’t—the fatal fisher
Hooks souls, while we waste moments.
Horace has some lines, thus paraphrased by Oldham:
Alas! dear friend, alas! time hastes away,
Nor is it in your power to bribe its stay;
The rolling years with constant motion run,
Lo! while I speak, the present minute’s gone,
And following hours still urge the foregoing on.
’Tis not thy wealth, ’tis not thy power,
’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 glass is run,
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
Is wise in man. As if an angel spoke,
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
Than lead to fools, and fools reputed wise.
What moment granted man without account?
What years are squandered, wisdom’s debt unpaid!
Our wealth in days all due to that discharge.
* * * *
Youth, is not rich in time; it may be poor;
Part with it as with money, sparing; pay
No moment, but in purchase of its worth;
And what’s it worth, ask death-beds; they can tell.
Part with it as with life, reluctant; big
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
To teach her sons herself. Each night we die—
Each morn are born anew; each day a life;
And shall we kill each day? If trifling kills,
Sure vice must butcher. Oh, what heaps of slain
Cry out for vengeance on us; time destroyed
Is suicide, where more than blood is spilt.
Throw years away!
Throw empires, and be blameless: moments seize;
Heaven’s on their wing: a moment we may wish,
When worlds want wealth to buy. Bid day stand still,
Bid him drive back his car, and re-impart
The period past, regive the given hour.
O for yesterdays to come!
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;
Unheeded flew the hours;
How noiseless falls the foot of Time
That only treads on flow’rs!
Edward Moore, in one of his pleasing Songs, 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 stamp its seal on aged things,
To wake the morn, and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger, till he render right.
Elsewhere Shakspeare paints him as the universal balm:
Cease to lament for that thou can’st not help,
And study help for that which thou lament’st.
Time is the nurse and breeder of all good.
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.
The Palm his due who, uncontroll’d,
On danger looking gravely,
When fate had done the worst it could,
Who bore his fortunes bravely.
Most worthy of the Oaken wreath
The ancients him esteemed,
Who in a battle had from death
Some man of worth redeemed.
About his temples grave they tie,
Himself that so behaved,
In some strong siege by th’ enemy,
A city that hath saved.
A wreath of Vervains heralds wear,
Amongst our garlands named,
Being sent that dreadful news to bear,
Offensive war proclaimed.
The sign of peace who first displays,
The Olive wreath possesses;
The lover with the Myrtle sprays
Adorns his crisped tresses.
In love the sad forsaken wight
The Willow garland weareth;
The funeral man, befitting night,
The baleful Cypress beareth.
To Pan we dedicate the Pine,
Whose slips the shepherd graceth;
Again the Ivy and the Vine
On his front Bacchus placeth.
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
The crush of thunder and the warring winds,
Shook by the slow but sure destroyer Time,
Now hangs in doubtful ruins o’er its base,
And flinty pyramids and walls of brass
Descend. The Babylonian spires are sunk;
Achaia, Rome, and Egypt moulder down.
Time shakes the stable tyranny of thrones,
And tottering empires rush by their own weight.
This huge rotundity we tread grows old,
And all these worlds that roll around the sun;
The sun himself shall die, and ancient night
Again involve the desolate abyss,
Till the Great Father, through the lifeless gloom,
Extend his arm to light another world,
And bid new planets roll by other laws.
We remember a piece of stage sentiment, beginning
“Time! Time! Time! why ponder o’er thy glass,
And count the dull sands as they pass?” &c.
It was touchingly sung, but had too much of gloom and despondency for the theatre: possibly it may have reminded some of its hearers of their own delinquency.
With what solemnity has our great Dramatic Bard foreshadowed Time’s waning:
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
His departure is again sketched in Troilus and Cressida:
Time is like a fashionable host,
That slightly shakes his parting guest by th’ hand,
But with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly,
Grasps the incomer.
Sir Walter Scott thus paints Time’s evanescence:
Time rolls his ceaseless course.—The race of yore,
Who danced our infancy upon their knee,
And told our marvelling boyhood legends store
Of their strange ’ventures happ’d by land or sea,
How are they blotted from the things that be!
Cowley has this significant couplet:
To things immortal Time can do no wrong,
And that which never is to die for ever must be young.
Yet, what a treasure is this:
My inheritance! how wide and fair!
Time is my estate; to Time I’m heir.
Wilhelm Meister: Carlyle.
“Time is almost a human word, and change entirely a human idea: in the system of nature we should rather say progress than change. The sun appears to sink in the ocean in darkness, but rises in another hemisphere; the ruins of a city fall, but they are often used to form more magnificent structures, as at Rome; but even when they are destroyed, so as to produce only dust, nature asserts her empire over them, and the vegetable world rises in constant youth, and in a period of annual successions, by the labours of man, providing food, vitality, and beauty upon the wreck of monuments which were once raised for purposes of glory, but which are now applied to objects of utility.”
As this beautiful passage was written by Sir Humphry Davy nearly three-and-thirty years since, the above use of the word progress had nothing to do with the semi-political sense in which it is now commonly employed. Nevertheless, there occur in the writings of our great chemical philosopher occasional views of the advancement of the world in knowledge, and its real authors, with which the progressists of the present day fraternise.
At the above distance, Davy wrote in the following vein: “In the common history of the world, as compiled by authors in general, almost all the great changes of nations are confounded with changes in their dynasties; and events are usually referred either to sovereigns, chiefs, heroes, or their armies, which do, in fact, originate entirely from different causes, either of an intellectual or moral nature. Governments depend far more than is generally supposed upon the opinion of the people and the spirit of the age and nation. It sometimes happens that a gigantic mind possesses supreme power, and rises superior to the age in which he is born: such was Alfred in England, and Peter in Russia. Such instances are, however, very rare; and in general it is neither amongst sovereigns nor the higher classes of society that the great improvers and benefactors of mankind are to be found.”—Consolations in Travel, pp. 34, 35.
Brilliant as was Davy’s own career, it had its life-struggles: his last days were embittered with sufferings, mental as well as physical; and in these moments he may have written these somewhat querulous remarks.
