MOMENT—MINUTE.
In a moment shall they die, and the people shall be troubled at midnight, and pass away.—Job, xxxiv. 20.
Come, my people, enter thou into thy chambers, and shut thy doors about thee: hide thyself as it were for a little moment, until the indignation be overpast.—Isaiah, xxvi. 20.
Minutes are number’d by the fall of sands,
As by an hour-glass; the span of time
Doth waste us to our graves and we look on it.
An age of pleasures, revell’d out, comes home
At last, and ends in sorrow; but the life,
Weary of riot, numbers every sand,
Waiting in sighs, until the last drop down;
So to conclude calamity in rest.
Ford.
Catch, then, O catch the transient hour,
Improve each moment as it flies;
Life’s a short summer,—man a flower;
He dies—alas! how soon he dies!
Dr. Johnson.
Hark! What petty pulses, beating,
Spring new moments into light;
Every pulse, its stroke repeating,
Sends its moment back to night;
Yet not one of all the train
Comes uncall’d, or flits in vain.
In the highest realms of glory
Spirits trace, before the throne,
On eternal scrolls, the story
Of each little moment flown;
Every deed, and word, and thought,
Through the whole creation wrought.
Were the volume of a minute
Thus to mortal sight unroll’d,
More of sin and sorrow in it,
More of man, might we behold,
Than on history’s broadest page
In the reliques of an age.
James Montgomery.