“ ‘Then let not piety be put to flight,
To please the taste of glutton appetite;
But suffer inmate souls secure to dwell,
Lest from their seats your parents you expel;
With rabid hunger feed upon your kind,
Or from a beast dislodge a brother’s mind.
“ ‘And since, like Typhis parting from the shore,
In ample seas I sail, and depths untried before,
This let me farther add, that nature knows
No steadfast station, but or ebbs or flows:
Ever in motion; she destroys her old,
And casts new figures in another mould.
Ev’n times are in perpetual flux, and run,
Like rivers from their fountain, rolling on;
For time, no more than streams, is at a stay;
The flying hour is ever on her way:
And as the fountain still supplies her store,
The wave behind impels the wave before:
Thus in successive course the minutes run,
And urge their predecessor minutes on,
Still moving, ever new: for former things
Are set aside, like abdicated kings;
And every moment alters what is done,
And innovates some act, till then unknown.
“ ‘Darkness we see emerges into light,
And shining suns descend to sable night;
Ev’n heaven itself receives another dye,
When wearied animals in slumbers lie
Of midnight ease: another, when the gray
Of morn preludes the splendour of the day.
The disk of Phoebus, when he climbs on high,
Appears at first but as a bloodshot eye;
And when his chariot downward drives to bed,
His ball is with the same suffusion red;
But mounted high in his meridian race,
All bright he shines, and with a better face:
For there, pure particles of ether flow,
Far from the infection of the world below.
“ ‘Nor equal light the unequal moon adorns,
Or in her waxing, or her waning horns;
For every day she wanes, her face is less;
But gathering into globe, she fattens at increase.
“ ‘Perceiv’st thou not the process of the year,
How the four seasons in four forms appear,
Resembling human life in every shape they wear?
Spring, first, like infancy, shoots out her head,
With milky juice requiring to be fed:
Helpless, though fresh, and wanting to be led.
The green stem grows in stature, and in size,
But only feeds with hope the farmer’s eyes;
Then laughs the childish year with flow’rets crown’d,
And lavishly perfumes the fields around.
But no substantial nourishment receives;
Infirm the stalks, unsolid are the leaves.
“ ‘Proceeding onward whence the year began,
The summer grows adult, and ripens into man.
This season, as in men, is most replete
With kindly moisture, and prolific heat.
“ ‘Autumn succeeds, a sober tepid age,
Not froze with fear, nor boiling into rage;
More than mature, and tending to decay,
When our brown locks repine to mix with odious gray.
“ ‘Last, winter creeps along with tardy pace;
Sour is his front, and furrow’d is his face:
His scalp, if not dishonour’d quite of hair,
The ragged fleece is thin; and thin is worse than bare.
“ ‘Ev’n our own bodies daily change receive,
Some part of what was theirs before, they leave;
Nor are to-day what yesterday they were;
Nor the whole same to-morrow will appear.
“ ‘Time was when we were sow’d, and just began
To show the promise of a future man:
Then nature’s hand (fermented as it was)
Moulded to shape the soft coagulated mass;
And when the little man was fully form’d,
The breathless embryo with a spirit warm’d;
But when the mother’s throes begin to come,
The creature, pent within the narrow room,
Breaks his blind prison, pushing to repair
His stifled breath, and draw the living air;
Cast on the margin of the world he lies,
A helpless babe, but by instinct he cries.
He next essays to walk, but downward press’d
On four feet imitates his brother beast:
By slow degrees he gathers from the ground
His legs, and to the rolling chair is bound;
Then walks alone; a horseman now become,
He rides a stick, and travels round the room.
In time he vaunts among his youthful peers;
Strong boned, and strung with nerves, in pride of years,
He runs with mettle his first merry stage,
Maintains the next, abated of his rage,
But manages his strength, and spares his age.
Heavy the third, and stiff, he sinks apace,
And though ’tis downhill all, he creeps along the race.
Now sapless on the verge of death he stands,
Contemplating his former feet and hands;
And, Milo like, his slacken’d sinews sees,
And wither’d arms, once fit to cope with Hercules,
Unable now to shake, much less to tear, the trees.
“ ‘So Helen wept, when her too faithful glass
Reflected on her eyes the ruins of her face:
“ ‘Thy teeth, devouring time, thine, envious age,
On things below still exercise your rage:
With venom’d grinders you corrupt your meat,
And then, at lingering meals, the morsels eat.
“ ‘Nor those, which elements we call, abide,
Nor to this figure, nor to that are tied;
For this eternal world is said, of old,
But four prolific principles to hold,
Four different bodies; two to heaven ascend,
And other two down to the centre tend:
Fire first with wings expanded mounts on high,
Pure, void of weight, and dwells in upper sky;
Then air, because unclogg’d in empty space,
Flies after fire, and claims the second place:
But weighty water, as her nature guides,
Lies on the lap of earth; and mother earth subsides.
“ ‘All things are mix’d of these, which all contain,
And into these are all resolved again:
Earth rarifies to dew; expanded more,
The subtle dew in air begins to soar;
Spreads, as she flies, and weary of her name
Extenuates still, and changes into flame;
Thus having by degrees perfection won,
Restless they soon untwist the web they spun,
And fire begins to lose her radiant hue,
Mix’d with gross air, and air descends to dew;
And dew condensing, does her form forego,
And sinks a heavy lump of earth below.
“ ‘Thus are their figures never at a stand,
But changed by nature’s innovating hand;
All things are alter’d, nothing is destroy’d,
The shifted scene for some new show employ’d.
“ ‘Then, to be born is to begin to be
Some other thing we were not formerly:
And what we call to die, is not to appear,
Or be the thing that formerly we were.
Those very elements, which we partake
Alive, when dead some other bodies make:
Translated grow, have sense, or can discourse;
But death on deathless substance have no force.
“ ‘That forms are changed, I grant; that nothing can
Continue in the figure it began:
The golden age to silver was debased,
To copper that; our metal came at last.
“ ‘The face of places, and their forms decay;
And that is solid earth that once was sea:
Seas in their turn retreating
