O let not riches prove thy spirit’s bane!
Nor shall thou seek for happiness in vain,—
Though rough thy paths of life on every hand,
Firm on its base thy truest bliss shall stand.”
Now Whitney adopts, in part at least, a much more literal interpretation; he follows out what the figure of Time and the accessory figures suggest, and so improves his proverb-text as to found upon it what appears pretty plainly to have been the groundwork of the ancient song,—“The old English gentleman, one of the olden time.” The type of that truly venerable character was “Thomas Wilbraham Esquier,” an early patron of Lord Chancellor Egerton. Whitney’s lines are (p. 199),—
“Wee flee, from that wee seeke; & followe, that wee leaue:
And, whilst wee thinke our webbe to skante, & larger still would weaue,
Lo, Time dothe cut vs of, amid our carke: and care.
Which warneth all, that haue enoughe, and not contented are.
For to inioye their goodes, their howses, and their landes: