Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb’d,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum’d,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t’whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav’nly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this Earthy grossness quit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee
O Time.
– John Milton (1608-1674), On Time
John Milton, best known for the epic Paradise Lost, here mocks the steady drum beat of time. The poem was initially titled “To Be Set on a Clock-Case.” Milton imagined a large grandfather clock with this poem inscribed upon its casing, its large weight (“Plummet” in line three) pulling the gears and ticking rhythmically.
Milton may have been familiar with the preaching of John Donne, whose church was visible from Milton’s school he attended while a boy. This poem invites a comparison with Donne’s Holy Sonnet X where he mocks death, “O Death, be not proud…” But here, it is not Death personified, but Time.
The poem is comprised of two sentences that stretch over lines 1-8, and 9-22.
Fly envious Time, till thou run out thy race,
Call on the lazy leaden-stepping hours,
Whose speed is but the heavy Plummets pace;
And glut thy self with what thy womb devours,
Which is no more then what is false and vain,
And meerly mortal dross;
So little is our loss,
So little is thy gain.
The first sentence is a rude taunt of “envious Time” who Milton likens to a monstrous mother who devours what she gives birth to: And glut thy self with what thy womb devours. Time gives us this moment, only to take it away from us as the moment passes. Yet, Milton is unbothered, because the only thing that can be taken is what is false and vain…merely mortal dross. For the Christian whose hope lie in Eternity, we lose only that which is unimportant. As the waves of Time scrape over us, it only pulls out the detritus, leaving the Eternal rock of our hope unmoved.
For when as each thing bad thou hast entomb’d,
And last of all, thy greedy self consum’d,
Then long Eternity shall greet our bliss
With an individual kiss;
And Joy shall overtake us as a flood,
When every thing that is sincerely good
And perfectly divine,
With Truth, and Peace, and Love shall ever shine
About the supreme Throne
Of him, t’whose happy-making sight alone,
When once our heav’nly-guided soul shall climb,
Then all this Earthy grossness quit,
Attir’d with Stars, we shall for ever sit,
Triumphing over Death, and Chance, and thee
O Time.
The second (very long) sentence turns to the eternal hope a Christian has of Heaven. Time is now described like a snake eating its own tail after it has consumed each thing bad, leaving only thy greedy self to consume. For the Christian who is promised that “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28), that means that as Time passes, God sifts out that which would do us evil, and only leaves that which will serve our good. Then long Eternity shall greet us with a kiss. Milton then stokes our desires for Heaven and all its attendant blessings: joy, goodness, perfection, truth, peace, and love forever shining about God’s supreme Throne. Simply seeing God will make us happy. Everything that befouls and leaves us dirty here on earth will be left behind. In their place we will be clothed with the light of resurrection, shining, “like the stars forever and ever,” (Daniel 12:3), victors who stand triumphant over Death, Chance and thee O Time.
For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. – 1 Cor 15:53
Marc Sims 