Backward, flow backward, O full tide of years! I am so weary of toil and of tears,

Toil without recompense tears all in vain, Take them and give me my childhood again. I have grown weary of dust and decay, Weary of flinging my heart's wealth away— Weary of sowing for others to reap; Rock me to sleep, mother, rock me to sleep. A. M. W. BALL-Rock me to Sleep, Mother. Attributed to ELIZABETH AKERS ALLEN. See Northern Monthly. Vol. II. 1868. Pub. by ALLEN L. BASSETT, Newark, N. J. Appendix to March, Vol. II. 1868. Ball shows proof that he wrote it in 1856-7. Produces witness who saw it before 1860. Mrs. Allen says she wrote it in Italy, 1860. It was published in The Knickerbocker Mag., May, 1861.

6

Backward, turn backward, then time in your flight;

Make me a child again just for tonight.
Mother, come back from the echoeless shore,
Take me again to your heart as of yore.

A. M. W. BALL-Rock me to Sleep, Mother.

7

Why slander we the times?

What crimes

Have days and years, that we
Thus charge them with iniquity?

If we would rightly scan,

It's not the times are bad, but man. DR. J. BEAUMONT-Original Poems.

8

Wherever anything lives, there is, open somewhere, a register in which time is being inscribed. HENRI BERGSON-Creative Evolution. Ch. I.

9

Le temps fuit, et nous traîne avec soi:
Le moment où je parle est déjà loin de moi.

Time flies and draws us with it. The moment in which I am speaking is already far from me.

BOILEAU-Epitres. III. 47.

12

No! no arresting the vast wheel of time,

That round and round still turns with onward might,

Stern, dragging thousands to the dreaded night Of an unknown hereafter.

CHARLES COWDEN CLARKE Sonnet. The Course of Time.

13

Hours are Time's shafts, and one comes winged with death.

On the clock at Keir House, near Denblane, the Seat of Sir William Stirling Maxwell.

14

Sex horas somno, totidem des legibus æquis
Quatuor orabis, des epulisque duas;
Quod superest ultro sacris largire Camoenis.

Six hours in sleep, in law's grave study six,
Four spend in prayer, the rest on nature fix.
COKE introduced this as "ancient verses" in
Institutes of the Laws of England. Bk. II.
Ch. I. Section 85. See also GILBERT's Law
of Evidence. (1784)

Sex horis dormire sat est juvenique senique:
Septem vix pigro; nulli concedimus octo.

Six hours in sleep is enough for youth and age. Perhaps seven for the lazy, but we allow eight to no one.

Version from Collectio Salernitans.
Renzi. Vol. II. L. 130.

15

Ed. De

(See also FROUDE, HESIOD, JONES)

Now is the accepted time. II Corinthians. VI. 2.

16

Touch us gently, Time!

Let us glide adown thy stream Gently, as we sometimes glide Through a quiet dream!

BARRY CORNWALL-A Petition to Time.

17

Begin, be bold, and venture to be wise,

He who defers this work from day to day, Does on a river's bank expecting stay, Till the whole stream, which stopped him, should be gone,

That runs, and as it runs, for ever will run on. COWLEY-The Danger of Procrastination. Translation of HORACE. 1. Ep. II. 4.

18

Nothing is there to come, and nothing past, But an eternal Now does always last. COWLEY-Davideis. Bk. I. L. 361.

19

His time's forever, everywhere his place. COWLEY-Friendship in Absence. St. 3.

20

Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing, Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound. COWPER-The Task. Bk. IV. L. 211.

21

See Time has touched me gently in his race,
And left no odious furrows in my face.

CRABBE-Tales of the Hall. Bk. XVII. The
Widow. St. 3.

22

Swift speedy Time, feathered with flying hours, Dissolves the beauty of the fairest brow. SAMUEL DANIEL-Delia.