YCBA Collections Search

Lettered inside image: "23 | Pregnant with all eternity can give; | Pregnant with all that makes archangels smile: | Who murders time, he crushes in the birth | A power ethereal, only not adored. | Ah! how unjust to nature and himself, | Is thoughtless, thankless, inconsistent man! | Like children babbling nonsense in their sports, | *We censure nature for a span too short; | That span too short, we tax as tedious too; | Torture invention, all expedients tire, | To lash the ling'ring moments into speed, | And whirl us, happy riddance! from ourselves. | Art, brainless art! our furious charioteer, | For nature's voice unstifled would recall, | Drives headlong tow'rds the precipice of death-- | Death, most our dread; death thus more dreadful made | O what a riddle of absurdity! | Leisure is pain; take off our chariot-wheels, | How heavily we drag the load of life! | Blest leisure is our curse; like that of Cain, | It makes us wander; wander earth around | To fly that tyrant, thought. As Atlas groan'd | The world beneath, we groan beneath an hour: | We cry for mercy to the next amusement; | The next amusement mortgages our fields-- | Slight inconvenience! prisons hardly frown-- | From hateful time if prisons set us free; | Yet when death kindly tenders us relief, | We call him cruel; years to moments shrink, | Ages to years: the telescope is turn'd,"; lower right: "inv. & sc | WB"; lower right: "Pubd. June 27th. 1796 by R. Edwards No. 142 New Bond Street."; Lettered on verso, inside image: "24 | To man's false opticks, from his folly false, | *Time, in advance, behind him hides his wings, | And seems to creep decrepit with his age: | Behold him, when past by; what then is seen, | But his broad pinions swifter than the winds? | And all mankind, in contradiction strong, | Rueful--aghast--cry out on his career. | Leave to thy foes these errors, and these ills; | To nature just, their cause and cure explore. | Not short Heaven's bounty, boundless our expence; | No niggard nature; men are prodigals: | We waste, not use our time; we breathe, not live: | Time wasted is existence, used is life: | And bare existence, man, to live ordain'd, | Wrings and oppresses with enormous weight: | And why? since time was given for use, not waste, | Enjoin'd to fly; with tempest, tide, and stars | To keep his speed, nor ever wait for man: | Time's use was doom'd a pleasure; waste, a pain: | That man might feel his error, if unseen; | And, feeling, fly to labour for his cure; | Not, blund'ring, split on idleness for ease. | Life's cares are comforts, such by Heaven design'd; | He that has none, must make them, or be wretched: | Cares are employments; and without employ | The soul is on the rack; the rack of rest, | To souls most adverse; action all their joy. | Here, then, the riddle mark'd above, unfolds; | Then time turns torment, when man turns a fool: | We rave, we wrestle with great nature's plan;"; lower right: "inv | WB"; lower left: "<Pubd.> June 27th. 1796 by R. Edwards No. 142 New Bond Street."