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Time.
THE conventional personification of Time, with which every one is
familiar, is the figure of Saturn, god of Time, represented as an old
man, holding a scythe in his hand, and a serpent with its tail in its
mouth, emblematical of the revolutions of the year: sometimes he carries
an hour-glass, occasionally winged; to him is attributed the invention
of the scythe. He is bald, except a lock on the forehead; hence Swift
says: “Time is painted with a lock before, and bald behind, signifying
thereby that we must take him (as we say) by the forelock; for when it
is once passed, there is no recalling it.”
The scythe occurs in Shirley’s lines, written early in the seventeenth
century:
The glories of our blood and state
Are shadows, not substantial things;
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings.
Sceptre and crown
Must tumble down,
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked scythe and spade.
Shakspeare prefers the scythe:
Time doth transfix the flourish set on youth,
And delves the parallels in beauty’s brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature’s truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe to mow.
The stealthiness of his flight is also told by Shakspeare:
Let’s take the instant by the forward top;
For we are old, and our quick’st decrees
The inaudible and noiseless foot of Time
Steals ere we can effect them.
Mayne thus quaintly describes his flight:
Time is the feather’d thing,
And whilst I praise
The sparklings of thy locks, and call them rays,
Takes wing—
Leaving behind him, as he flies,
An unperceived dimness in thine eyes.
Gascoigne also thus paints the flight:
The heavens on high perpetually do move;
By minutes’ meal the hour doth steal away,
By hours the days, by days the months remove,
And then by months the years as fast decay;
Yea, Virgil’s verse and Tully’s truth do say,
That Time flieth, and never clasps her wings;
But rides on clouds, and forward still she flings.
Shakspeare pictures him as the fell destroyer:
Misshapen time, copesmate of ugly night;
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly care;
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Base watch of woes, sin’s pack-horse, virtue’s snare:
Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are.