Time and Its Passage

It is time to be old, To take in sail.

Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands.

Time hath a taming hand.

He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E’en like the passage of an angel’s tear That falls through the clear ether silently.

How many bards gild the lapses of time!

So here hath been dawning Another blue Day: Think wilt thou let it Slip useless away.

The One remains, the many change and pass; Heaven’s light forever shines, earth’s shadows fly; Life, like a dome of many-colored glass, Stains the white radiance of eternity, Until Death tramples it to fragments—Die, If thou wouldst be with that which thou dost seek!

As long as skies are blue, and fields are green, Evening must usher night, night urge the morrow, Month follow month with woe, and year wake year to sorrow.

Kings are like stars—they rise and set, they have The worship of the world, but no repose.

Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but Mutability.

So we’ll go no more a-roving So late into the night, Though the heart be still as loving, And the moon be still as bright. For the sword outwears its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself have rest. Though the night was made for loving, And the day returns too soon, Yet we’ll go no more a-roving By the light of the moon.

Time writes no wrinkle on thine azure brow— Such as creation’s dawn beheld, thou rollest now.

For years fleet away with the wings of the dove.

Time will rust the sharpest sword, Time will consume the strongest cord; That which molders hemp and steel, Mortal arm and nerve must feel.

The unimaginable touch of Time.

But pleasures are like poppies spread— You seize the flow’r, its bloom is shed; Or like the snow falls in the river— A moment white—then melts forever.

This day Time winds th’ exhausted chain, To run the twelvemonth’s length again.

John Anderson my jo, John, When we were first acquent, Your locks were like the raven, Your bonie brow was brent; But now your brow is beld, John, Your locks are like the snaw, But blessings on your frosty pow, John Anderson my jo!

To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand And eternity in an hour.

He who binds to himself a joy Does the winged life destroy; But he who kisses the joy as it flies Lives in eternity’s sunrise.

If you trap the moment before it’s ripe, The tears of repentance you’ll certainly wipe; But if once you let the ripe moment go You can never wipe off the tears of woe.

Think in the morning. Act in the noon. Eat in the evening. Sleep in the night.

Eternity is in love with the production of time.

Like our shadows, Our wishes lengthen as our sun declines.