She went from opera, park, assembly, play,
To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day.
To part her time 'twixt reading and bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea,
Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon.
Let us (since life can little more supply
Than just to look about us and to die)
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man;
A mighty maze! but not without a plan.
Placed on this isthmus of a middle state.
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot,
To draw nutrition, propagate and rot.
On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.
Like bubbles on the sea of matter borne,
They rise, they break, and to that sea return.
Poph!—Essay on Man. Ep. III. L. 19.
| seealso = (See also Omar)
| topic = Life
| page = 450
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>Like following life through creatures you dissect,
You lose it in the moment you detect.
See how the World its Veterans rewards!
A Youth of Frolics, an old Age of Cards;
Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,
Young without Lovers, old without a Friend;
A Fop their Passion, but their Prize a Sot;
Alive ridiculous, and dead forgot.
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will;
You've play'd, and lov'd, and ate, and drank your fill:
Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age
Comes titt'ring on, and shoves you from the stage.
Through the sequester'd vale of rural life
The venerable patriarch guileless held
The tenor of his way.
Pokteus—Death. L. 109.
| seealso = (See also Gat)
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>Amid two seas, on one small point of land,
Wearied, uncertain, and amazed we stand.
Prior—Solomon on the Vanity of Human Wishes. Pt. III. L. 616.
Who breathes must suffer; and who thinks, must mourn;
And he alone is bless'd who ne'er was born.
Prior—Solomon on the Vanity of the World.
Bk. III. L. 240.
| topic = Life
| page = 450
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>So vanishes our state; so pass our days;
So life but opens now, and now decays;
The cradle and the tomb, alas! so nigh,
To live is scarce distinguish'd from to die.
Half my life is full of sorrow,
Half of joy, still fresh and new;
One of these lives is a fancy,
But the other one is true.
Adelaide A. Procter—Dream-Life.
Lord, make me to know mine end, and the
measure of my days, what it is; that I may know
how frail I am.
Psalms. XXXIX. 4.
As for man his days are as grass; as a flower
of the field so he flourisheth.
Psalms. CHI. 15.
The wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
and the place thereof shall know it no more.
Psalms. CHI. 16.
Our life is nothing but a Winter's day;
Some only break their Fast, and so away:
Others stay to Dinner, and depart full fed:
The deepest Age but Sups, and goes to Bed:
He's most in debt that lingers out the Day:
Who dies betime, has less, and less to pay.
Quarles—Divine Fancies. On The Life of Man. (1633) Quoted in different forms for epitaphs.
| seealso = (See also Dryden, Gerhard, Henslaw, Jenkins, Seneca)
| topic = Life
| page = 450
}}
{{Hoyt quote
| num =
| text = <poem>Man's life is like a Winter's day:
Some only breakfast and away;
Others to dinner stay and are full fed.
The oldest man but sups and goes to bed.
Long is his life who lingers out the day,
Who goes the soonest has the least to pay;
Death is the Waiter, some few run on tick,
And some alas! must pay the bill to Nick!
Tho' I owed much, I hope long trust is given,
And truly mean to pay all bills in Heaven.
Epitaph in Barnwell Churchyard, near Cambridge, England.
Et la commencay a, penser qu'i] est bien vray
ce que l'on dit, que la moitie du monde ne scait
comment l'aultre vit.
And there I began to think that it is very
true, which is said, that half the world does
not know how the other half lives.
Rabelais—Pantagruel. Ch. XXXII.
Vivat, fifat, pipat, bibat.
May he live, fife, pipe, drink.
Rabelais—Pantagruel. Bk. IV. Ch. 53.
Called by Epistemon, "O secret apocalyptique." It suggests "Old King Cole."
The romance of life begins and ends with two
blank pages. Age and extreme old age.
Paul Jean Richter.
