Time and Its Passage

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rime.

Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore, So do our minutes hasten to their end.

Against that time when thou shalt strangely pass, And scarcely greet me with that sun, thine eye, When love, converted from the thing it was, Shall reasons find of settled gravity.

Full many a glorious morning have I seen.

But thy eternal summer shall not fade.

Everything that grows Holds in perfection but a little moment.

When forty winters shall besiege thy brow, And dig deep trenches in thy beauty’s field.

Come what come may, Time and the hour runs through the roughest day.

The weight of this sad time we must obey; Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say. The oldest hath borne most: we that are young, Shall never see so much, nor live so long.

A forted residence ’gainst the tooth of time And razure of oblivion.

Thou hast nor youth nor age; But, as it were, an after-dinner’s sleep, Dreaming on both; for all thy blessed youth Becomes as aged, and doth beg the alms Of palsied eld; and when thou art old and rich, Thou hast neither heat, affection, limb, nor beauty, To make thy riches pleasant.

The inaudible and noiseless foot of time.

When that I was and a little tiny boy, With hey, ho, the wind and the rain; A foolish thing was but a toy, For the rain it raineth every day. 40

Let still the woman take An elder than herself, so wears she to him, So sways she level in her husband’s heart: For, boy, however we do praise ourselves, Our fancies are more giddy and unfirm, More longing, wavering, sooner lost and worn, Than women’s are.

Then, let thy love be younger than thyself, Or thy affection cannot hold the bent; For women are as roses, whose fair flower Being once display’d, doth fall that very hour.

These most brisk and giddy-paced times.

What is love? ’tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure: In delay there lies no plenty; Then come kiss me, sweet and twenty, Youth’s a stuff will not endure.

The end crowns all, And that old common arbitrator, Time, Will one day end it.

Time is like a fashionable host, That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand, And with his arms outstretch’d, as he would fly, Grasps in the comer: welcome ever smiles, And farewell goes out sighing.

Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion.

And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, And thereby hangs a tale.

And then he drew a dial from his poke, And, looking on it with lack-luster eye, Says very wisely, “It is ten o’clock; Thus may we see,” quoth he, “how the world wags.” 27

How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted o’er, In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

Before thy hour be ripe.