The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.
~
Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.
~
Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf.
– Rabindranath Tagore
~
Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.
– William Shakespeare, Sonnet 19
~
“Time is very slow for those who wait;
very fast for those who are scared;
very long for those who lament;
very short for those who celebrate; but for those who love, time is eternal.”
– William Shakespeare
Other Poems on Time
- I had no time to hate – Emily Dickinson
- Time and Love – Vidyapati
- Farewell Time – Sri Chinmoy
- This is the time of fire – Robert Hass
- The small table of time and space – Hafiz
- On Time – Milton
- Time Runs backwards after death – Robert Bly
- Time, Real and Imaginary – An Allegory – Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- The Loom of Time – anon
- Song of the Open Road – Walt Whitman