TIME IS FLYING.
Gather the rose-buds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying,
And this same flower that smiles to-day,
To-morrow will be dying.
The glorious lamp of heaven, the Sun,
The higher he’s a-getting,
The sooner will his race be run,
And nearer he’s to setting.
That age is best which is the first,
When youth and blood are warmer;
But, being spent, the worse, and worst
Times shall succeed the former.
Then be not coy, but use your time,
And while ye may, go marry;
For, having lost but once your prime,
You may forever tarry. —Herrick.
Princes in their infancy, childhood and youth, are said to discover prodigious parts and wit, to speak things that surprise and astonish; strange, so many hopeful princes, so many shameful kings! If they happen to die young, they would have been prodigies of wisdom and virtue; if they live, they are often prodigies indeed——but of another sort.—Swift.
The imputation of novelty is a terrible charge amongst those who judge of men’s heads as they do of their perukes, by the fashion, and can allow none to be right but the received doctrines. Truth scarce ever yet carried it by vote anywhere at its first appearance; new opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common.—Locke.
There never was any party, faction, sect, or cabal whatsoever, in which the most ignorant were not the most violent; for a bee is not a busier animal than a blockhead. However, such instruments are necessary to politicians; and perhaps it may be with states as with clocks, which must have some dead weight hanging at them, to help and regulate the finer and more useful parts.—Pope.
Some divines make the same use of Fathers and Councils as our beaux do of their canes, not for support or defence, but mere ornament or show; and cover themselves with fine cob-web distinctions, as Homer’s gods did with a cloud.—Brown.