For Miss Emma Woodhouse and Miss Elizabeth Bennett:
Tempus fugit, tempus eternum est ...
A Hour With Thee
by
Sir Walter Scott
An hour with thee! When earliest day
Dapples with gold the eastern grey,
Oh, what can frame my mind to bear
The toil and turmoil, cark and care,
New griefs, which coming hours unfold,
And sad remembrance of the old?
One hour with thee.
One hour with thee! When burning June
Waves his red flag at pitch of noon;
What shall repay the faithful swain,
His labor on the sultry plain;
And, more than cave or sheltering bough,
Cool feverish blood and throbbing brow?
One hour with thee.
One hour with thee! When sun is set,
Oh, what can teach me to forget
The thankless labours of the day;
The hopes, the wishes, flung away;
The increasing wants, and lessening gains,
The master's pride, who scorns my pain?
One hour with thee.
To me faire friend you never can be old
by
William Shakespeare
To me faire friend you never can be old,
For as you were when first your eye I eyde,
Such seems your beauty still: Three Winters colde,
Have from the forrests shooke three summers pride,
Three beautious springs to yellow Autumme turn'd,
In process of the seasons have I seene,
Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd,
Since first I saw you fresh which yet are greene.
And yet doth beauty like a Dyall hand,
Steale from his figure, and no peace perceiv'd,
So your sweete hew, which me thinkes still doth stand
Hath motion, and mine eye may be deceaved.
For feare of which, heare this thou age unbred,
Ere you were born was beauties summer dead.
From the Mad Hatter,
"If you knew Time as well as I do," said the Hatter, "you wouldn't talk about wasting it. It's him."
"I don't know what you mean," said Alice.
"Of course you don't!" the Hatter said, tossing his head contemptously. "I dare say you never even spoke to Time!"
"Perhaps not," Alice cautiously replied, "but I know I have to beat time when I learn music."
"Ah! That accounts for it," said the Hatter, "He won't stand beating. Now, if you only kept on good terms with him, he'd do almost anything you liked with the clock. For instance, suppose it were nine o'clock in the morning, just in time to begin lessons: you'd only have to whisper a hint to Time, and round goes the clock in a twinkling! Half-past one, time for my dinner!"
Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass (New York: Bantam Editions, 1981), p. 56 (1st. Pub. 1865, 1871).
