| “Sweet health to pass the pleasant moments o’er And everlasting joy when Time shall be no more.” |
A watchmaker named Adams, who practised his craft many years ago in Church Street, Hackney, was fond of putting scraps of poetry in the outer case of watches sent him for repair. One of his effusions follow:
| “To-morrow! yes, to-morrow! you’ll repent A train of years in vice and folly spent. To-morrow comes—no penitential sorrow Appears therein, for still it is to-morrow; At length to-morrow such a habit gains That you’ll forget the time that Heaven ordains; And you’ll believe that day too soon will be When more to-morrows you’re denied to see.” |
Another old engraved specimen contained this verse:
| “Content thy selfe withe thyne estat, And sende no poore wight from thy gate; For why, this councell I thee give, To learne to dye, and dye to lyve.” |
The following lines by Pope, occurring in his Epistle to the Earl of Oxford, have been used in this way:
| “Absent or dead Still let a friend be Dear. The Absent claims a sigh, the dead a tear. May Angels guard The friend I love.” |
Milman’s poems have furnished a verse for this purpose:
| “It matters little at what hour o’ the day The righteous fall asleep; death cannot come To him untimely who is fit to die. The less of this cold world, the more of heaven; The briefer life, the earlier immortality.” |
Various other examples of watch-case verses follow: