Take Then Thy Saviour’s Warning—Watch And Pray!
One of the mottoes has an echo of Sidney:
Time As He Passes Us Has A Dove’s Wing
Unsoiled And Swift, And Of A Silken Sound.
“The Night Cometh” is neatly amplified upon a plate that supports a cross sun-dial on a stone pedestal upon the terrace of the hospital of St. Cross, Rugby:
The Passing Shadows Which The Sunbeams Throw
Athwart This Cross, Time’s Hastening Foot-Steps Show;
Warned By Their Teaching Work Ere Day Be O’er,
Soon Comes The Night When Man Can Work No More.
One motto reads Unam Time (Fear one hour); another, Unam Timeo (One hour I fear). Two others read, Heu Quærimus Umbram, Heu Patimus Umbram (Alas! we pursue a shadow), (Alas! we endure the shadow). Eheu Fugaces is marked upon a Yorkshire plate, and Labuntur Anni on Burnham Church, Somerset. The shortest mottoes are Redeme, J’avance, Remember, Irrevocabile. A beautiful stone sun-dial still casts its shadow in the old garden of Gilbert White, and is figured in Macmillan’s edition of the Natural History of Selborne. This is not mentioned in Mrs. Gatty’s comprehensive work, and I can not determine from the illustration whether it bears a motto. Each To His Task, taken from White’s Invitation would be an appropriate inscription.