Underneath it:
That solar shadow,
As it measures life, it life resembles too.
In Brading churchyard, Isle of Wight, on a Sun-dial fixed to what
appears originally to have been part of a churchyard cross, is the
motto:
Hora pars vitæ.
Near the porch of Milton church, Berks, is:
Our Life’s a flying Shadow; God’s the Pole,
Death, the Horizon, where our sun is set;
The Index, pointing at him, is our Soul,
Which will, through Christ, a Resurrection get.
Butler has this couplet:
True as the dial to the sun,
Although it be not shin’d upon.
_Hudibras_, part iii. canto 2.
Upon this Dr. Nash notes: “As the dial is invariable, and always open to
the sun whenever its rays can show the time of day, though the weather
is often cloudy, and obscures its lustre: so true loyalty is always
ready to serve its king and country, though it often suffers great
afflictions and distresses.”
There cannot be a more faithful indicator, according to Barton Booth’s
song:
True as the needle to the pole,
Or as the dial to the sun.
After all, the _sun_-dial is but an occasional timekeeper; a defect
which the pious Bishop Hall ingeniously illustrates in the following
beautiful Meditation “On the Sight of a Dial:” “If the sun did not shine
upon this dial, nobody would look at it: in a cloudy day it stands like
an useless post, unheeded, unregarded; but, when once those beams break
forth, every passenger runs to it, and gazes on it.
“O God, while thou hidest thy countenance from me, methinks all thy
creatures pass by me with a willing neglect. Indeed, what am I without
thee? And if thou have drawn in me some lines and notes of able
endowments; yet, if I be not actuated by thy grace, all is, in respect
of use, no better than nothing; but when thou renewest the light of thy
loving countenance upon me, I find a sensible and happy change of
condition: methinks all things look upon me with such cheer and
observance, as if they meant to make good that word of thine, _Those
that honour me, I will honour:_ now, every line and figure, which it
hath pleased thee to work in me, serve for useful and profitable
direction. O Lord, all the glory is thine. Give thou me light: I will
give others information: both of us shall give thee praise.”
The Pyramids of Egypt, the most ancient and the most colossal structures
on the earth,—the purpose and appropriation of which has been much
controverted by antiquaries and men of science,—have been considered by
some to have served as Sun-dials. Sir Gardner Wilkinson does not pretend
to explain the real object for which these stupendous monuments were
constructed, but feels persuaded that they have served for tombs, and
have also been intended for astronomical purposes. “The form of the
exterior might lead to many useful calculations. They stand exactly due
north and south; and while the direction of the faces to the east and
west might serve to fix the return of a certain period of the year, the
shadow cast by the sun, or the time of its coinciding with their slope,
might be observed for a similar purpose.”
There is an interesting association of the Great Pyramid with the
ambitious dream of one of the world’s celebrities, which may be noticed
here. When Napoleon I. was in Egypt, in 1799, he rode on a camel to the
Great Pyramid and the Sphinx, that relic of mystic grandeur. Karl
Girardet has painted this impressive visit; and the picture has been
engraved by Gautier, and inscribed, “Forty Centuries look down upon
him.”
Charles Mackay has written a graceful poem as a pendent to this print;
in which the poet makes the young Napoleon thus invoke the colossal
monuments:
Ye haughty Pyramids!
Thou Sphinx, whose eyeless lids
On my presumptuous youth seem bent in scorn!
What though thou’st stood
Coeval with the flood,
Of all earth’s monuments the earliest born,
And I so mean and small,
With armies at my call,
Am recent in thy sight as grass of yestermorn!
Yet in this soul of mine
Is strength as great as thine,
O dull-eyed Sphinx that wouldst despise me now;
Is grandeur like thine own,
O melancholy stone,
With forty centuries furrow’d on thy brow;
Deep in my heart I feel
What time shall yet reveal,
That I shall tower o’er men, as o’er these deserts thou.
The dreamer of empire proceeds, bespeaking:
Nations yet to be,
Surging from Time’s deep sea,
Shall teach their babes the name of great Napoleon.
But hear the reply of the decaying oracle:
Over the mighty chief
There came a shadow of grief.
The lips gigantic seemed to move and say,
“Know’st thou his name that bid
Arise yon Pyramid?
Know’st thou who placed me where I stand to-day?
Thy deeds are but as sand
Strewn on the heedless land:
Think, little mortal, think, and pass upon thy way!
Pass, little mortal, pass!
Grow like the vernal grass—
The autumn sickle shall destroy thy prime.
But nations shout the word
Which ne’er before they heard,
The name of glory, fearful yet sublime.
The Pharaohs are forgot,
Their works confess them not:
Pass, hero! pass,—poor straw upon the gulf of Time!”
It will be remembered how Napoleon’s disastrous Egyptian campaign ended;
and how he secretly embarked for France, and read during his passage
both the Bible and the Koran with great assiduity.
Among the interesting memorials of Mary Queen of Scots at Holyrood
Palace, Edinburgh, there remains the Sun-dial placed in the centre of
the palace-garden, and usually denominated “Queen Mary’s Dial.”
It is the apex of a richly-ornamented pedestal, which rests upon a
hexagonal base, consisting of three steps. The form of the
‘horologe’ is multangular; for though its principal sections are
pentagonal, yet from their terminating in pyramidal points, and
being diametrically opposed to each other, again connected by
triangular interspaces, it presents no fewer than twenty sides, on
which are placed twenty-two dials, inserted into circular,
semicircular, and triangular cavities. Between the dials are the
royal arms of Scotland, with the initials M. R., St. Andrew, St.
George, _fleurs-de-lis_, and other emblems. This memorial carries us
back nearly three centuries, when Holyrood was a palace
Where “Mary of Scotland” kept her court.
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Footnote 8:
The _Town and Country Magazine_, edited by Albert Smith.
Footnote 9:
N. T. Heineken; _Notes and Queries_, 3d series.
Footnote 10:
We remember this motto for many years beneath a large figure of Time,
executed in Coade and Seeley’s composition, and placed at the corner
of the lane leading from Westminster Bridge Road to Pedlar’s Acre.
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