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On Time, Death, Friendship.
19
Death, most our dread; death thus more dreadful made:
O what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot-wheels;
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields!
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons set us free.
Yet when death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him, when past by; what then is seen,
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast; cry out on his career.
Leave to thy foes these errors, and these ills;
To nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short heav'n's bounty, boundless our expence;
No niggard, nature; men are prodigals.
We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence, us'd in life.
And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings, and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was giv'n for use, not waste,
Injoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man;
Time's use was doom'd a pleasure; waste, a pain;
That man might feel his error, if unseen:
O what a riddle of absurdity!
Leisure is pain; takes off our chariot-wheels;
How heavily we drag the load of life!
Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain,
It makes us wander; wander earth around
To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd
The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour.
We cry for mercy to the next amusement;
The next amusement mortgages our fields!
Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown,
From hateful time if prisons set us free.
Yet when death kindly tenders us relief,
We call him cruel; years to moments shrink,
Ages to years. The telescope is turn'd.
To man's false optics (from his folly false)
Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings,
And seems to creep, decrepit with his age;
Behold him, when past by; what then is seen,
But his broad pinions swifter than the winds?
And all mankind, in contradiction strong,
Rueful, aghast; cry out on his career.
Leave to thy foes these errors, and these ills;
To nature just, their cause and cure explore.
Not short heav'n's bounty, boundless our expence;
No niggard, nature; men are prodigals.
We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live.
Time wasted is existence, us'd in life.
And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd,
Wrings, and oppresses with enormous weight.
And why? since time was giv'n for use, not waste,
Injoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars,
To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man;
Time's use was doom'd a pleasure; waste, a pain;
That man might feel his error, if unseen:
And,
