TIME

'What, GRISLY SHAPE, do you complain,

And curse the limits of your reign?

You, who can wage continual strife

With all things that partake of life, Lamenting, though your spear is hurl'd Each moment, through a suffering world? You are allow'd the fatal art

To break a neck or break a heart,

To let out life as it may suit

Your

savage will-you murd'rous brute.—

What would you more?—you hourly meet

The funeral trains in ev'ry street;

And stately mausoleums rise

As altars for your sacrifice.

More do you want?—then take a dance Among the blood-stain'd fields of France:

Ask Revolution how she sped

With her innumerable dead.

Is not your grasping arm content
With the whole bleeding Continent?—
Could YOU your frantic wish enjoy,
The world itself you would destroy :
Creation's bounds you would bestride,
And be yourself a SUICIDE.

More calmly then, pursue your trade,
Take up the mattock and the spade;
Heap dust on dust, add grave to grave,
Forget to fume, and fret, and rave;
And tune the burthen of the song-
"That LIFE is SHORT—but ART is LONG."
While you grin o'er the page before you,
You know you cannot touch the story;
Nor can you shove into a hearse
The Heav'n-born Bard's inspired verse:
You may, from mere resentment, kill
Th' unconscious Painter, if you will;
Yet, with his Work, his Name shall live,
And share the praise that Time can give.

The sculptur'd forms that stand around,
By my preserving spells are bound.

So 'tis arrang'd by that decree

Whose law commands both YOU and ME:

Cease then, I pray you, to complain,

Your Lamentations all are vain.

-You've told me in what feats you shine,

And now you will attend to mine.

'Tis I who to the human race

Give the immeasurable space,

Which from the æra of my birth,

Form'd the vast scene of man on earth;
And will, in order due, extend,

Till the vast scene of man shall end.

My course is regular and quiet,

I make no noise, I breed no riot.
Indeed, where'er my scythe appears,

It mows down days, and months, and years,
But 'tis a tranquil, silent deed;

And other days and years succeed.
I sometimes wear a wintry robe,
And, in dark mantle, clad the globe:
But, do I ever fail to bring

The fragrant zephyrs of the Spring?
The bounteous Summer next succeeds,
And the Autumnal vintage bleeds.
Thus through the year I bless the eye
With infinite variety.

My office, sometimes, may annoy,
But I ne'er hurry to destroy:
I on my well-pois'd wings attend,
And wait for Nature's ling'ring end.
May not I boast that I give birth
To all that decorates the earth ;
And, with renewing charm, supply
The waste of all beneath the sky?

Old

age,

the common eye will scan

In meaner things as well as man:

But, when the antique turrets fall,

When the storm shakes the mould'ring wall, I leave the venerated place

For modern art and skill to grace;

And make the wond'ring plain admire

The stranger forms and new attire. 'Tis true, destruction I employ,

But I preserve e'er I destroy.

When you, and your twin-brother Care,
A life prolong'd to mortals spare,
You say, I wrinkle o'er the cheek,

And make the pate so smooth and sleek:
But that is Wisdom's garb, and wore
By Nestor sage in days of yore:
Nay, as your ghastly eyes may see,
'Tis worn, you scraggy Shape, by me.
If Sickness hastens the decline
Of fading life, if pains combine,
They are your ministers-not mine.
I lead by slow and mild decay:
'Tis you that interrupt the way.
You force the youth in vernal bloom,

To seek the Winter of the tomb.

Life left to me, through ev'ry stage,
Would pass from infancy to age:
Its flame-the Climacteric past,
Would in the Socket sink at last;
But know, our final hour will come,
And WE shall share a common doom:
When, in the world's last hurricane,
My pennons broad I flap in vain;
And you shall ghastly grin and shiver,
With not an arrow in your quiver;

Then mortals, mortal then no more,

Shall to empyreal regions soar:

Then TIME shall end—and DEATH shall

die,

And MAN quaff Immortality.'