Quotes About Time

The years like great black oxen tread the world, And God the herdsman goads them on behind, And I am broken by their passing feet.

O DO NOT LOVE TOO LONG by: William Butler Yeats (1865-1939) WEETHEART, do not love too long: I loved long and long, And grew to be out of fashion Like an old song. All through the years of our youth Neither could have known Their own thought from the other's, We were so much at one. But O, in a minute she changed-- O do not love too long, Or you will grow out of fashion Like an old song.

For that pale breast and lingering hand Come from a more dream-heavy land, A more dream-heavy hour than this; And when you sigh from kiss to kiss I hear white Beauty sighing, too, For hours when all must fade like dew.

A line will take us hours may be; Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, Our stitching and unstitching has been nought.

I will love you forever" swears the poet. I find this easy to swear too. "I will love you at 4:15 pm next Tuesday" - Is that still as easy?

Time will say nothing but I told you so, Time only knows the price we have to pay; If I could tell you I would let you know.

My second thoughts condemn And wonder how I dare To look you in the eye. What right have I to swear Even at one a.m. To love you till I die? Earth meets too many crimes For fibs to interest her; If I can give my word, Forgiveness can recur Any number of times In Time. Which is absurd. Tempus fugit. Quite. So finish up your drink. All flesh is grass. It is. But who on earth can think With heavy heart or light Of what will come of this?

Were all stars to disappear and die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time. —W. H. Auden, "The More Loving One

But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time

So long as we think of it objectively, time is Fate or Chance, the factor in our lives for which we are not responsible, and about which we can do nothing; but when we begin to think of it subjectively, we feel responsible for our time, and the notion of punctuality arises.

Lay your sleeping head, my love, Human on my faithless arm; Time and fevers burn away Individual beauty from Thoughtful children, and the grave Proves the child ephemeral: But in my arms till break of day Let the living creature lie, Mortal, guilty, but to me The entirely beautiful.

In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.

The years shall run like rabbits, For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages, And the first love of the world.

This Lunar Beauty This lunar beauty Has no history, Is complete and early; If beauty later Bear any feature It had a lover And is another. This like a dream Keeps other time, And daytime is The loss of this; For time is inches And the heart's changes Where ghost has haunted Lost and wanted. But this was never A ghost's endeavour Nor, finished this, Was ghost at ease; And till it pass Love shall not near The sweetness here Nor sorrow take His endless look.

Let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.

The stars are dead. The animals will not look. We are left alone with our day, and the time is short, and History to the defeated May say Alas but cannot help nor pardon.

Time, that is intolerant Of the brave and innocent, And indifferent in a week To a beautiful physique, Worships language, and forgives Everyone by whom it lives; Pardons cowardice, conceit, Lays its honours at his feet. Time, that with this strange excuse, Pardons Kipling and his views, And will pardon Paul Claudel, Pardons him for writing well.

Two hundred years from now nobody will care much about our politics. But if we were truly moved by the things that happened to us, they may read our poems.

In the burrows of the Nightmare Where Justice naked is, Time watches from the shadow And coughs when you would kiss. 'In headaches and in worry Vaguely life leaks away, And Time will have his fancy To-morrow or to-day.

We live here. We lie in the Present's unopened Sorrow; its limits are what we are. The prisoner ought never to pardon his cell.

Time that is intolerant Of the brave and the innocent, And indifferent in a week To a beautiful physique, Worships language and forgives Everyone by whom it lives; Pardons cowardice, conceit, Lays its honours at their feet. ...

I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. The years shall run like rabbits For in my arms I hold The Flower of the Ages And the first love of the world. But all the clocks in the city Began to whirr and chime: 'O let not Time deceive you, You cannot conquer Time.

Admirer as I think I am Of stars that do not give a damn, I cannot, now I see them, say I missed one terribly all day. Were all stars to disappear or die, I should learn to look at an empty sky And feel its total dark sublime, Though this might take me a little time.

To forget the past so easily seems scarcely loyal to oneself. I am so selfishly absorbed in my present self that I have grown not to care a damn about that ever increasing collection of past selves- those dear, dead gentlemen who one after the other have tenanted the temple of this flesh and handed on the torch of my life and personal identity before creeping away silently and modestly to rest.