When wilt thou sort 1 an hour great strifes to end?
Or free that soul which wretchedness hath chain'd?
Give physic to the sick, ease to the pain'd?
The poor, lame, blind, halt, creep, cry out for thee;
But they ne'er meet with Opportunity.

130 The patient dies while the physician sleeps ;
The orphan pines while the oppressor feeds;
Justice is feasting while the widow weeps ;
Advice is sporting while infection breeds;
Thou grant'st no time for charitable deeds:
Wrath, envy, treason, rape, and murder's rages,
Thy heinous hours wait on them as their pages.

131 When Truth and Virtue have to do with thee,
A thousand crosses keep them from thy aid;
They buy thy help; but Sin ne'er gives a fee,
He gratis comes; and thou art well appay'd'
As well to hear as grant what he hath said.
My Collatine would else have come to me
When Tarquin did, but he was stay'd by thee.

132 'Guilty thou art of murder and of theft;
Guilty of perjury and subornation;
Guilty of treason, forgery, and shift;
Guilty of incest, that abomination;
An accessary by thine inclination
To all sins past, and all that are to come,
From the creation to the general doom.

133 Misshapen Time, copesmate of ugly Night,
Swift subtle post, carrier of grisly Care;
Eater of youth, false slave to false delight,
Sort:' assign.-Appay'd:' satisfied.

Base watch of woes, Sin's packhorse, Virtue's snare;
Thou nursest all, and murderest all that are.
Oh hear me then, injurious, shifting Time!
Be guilty of my death, since of my crime.

134 Why hath thy servant, Opportunity,

Betray'd the hours thou gav'st me to repose?
Cancell'd my fortunes, and enchainèd me
To endless date of never-ending woes?
Time's office is to fine 1 the hate of foes;
To eat up errors by opinion bred,
Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed.

135 Time's glory is to calm contending kings,

To unmask falsehood, and bring truth to light,
To stamp the seal of time in aged things,
To wake the morn, and sentinel the night,
To wrong the wronger till he render right;
To ruinate proud buildings with thy hours,

And smear with dust their glittering golden towers:

136 To fill with worm-holes stately monuments, To feed oblivion with decay of things,

To blot old books, and alter their contents,

To pluck the quills from ancient ravens' wings,
To dry the old oak's sap, and cherish springs; 2
To spoil antiquities of hammer'd steel,

And turn the giddy round of Fortune's wheel:

137 To show the beldame daughters of her daughter,
To make the child a man, the man a child,
To slay the tiger that doth live by slaughter,
To tame the unicorn and lion wild,
To mock the subtle, in themselves beguiled;
''Fine:' put an end to.-2Springs' shoots.

To cheer the ploughman with increaseful crops,
And waste huge stones with little water-drops.

138 Why work'st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage,
Unless thou couldst return to make amends?
One poor retiring 1 minute in an age

Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends,
Lending him wit, that to bad debtors lends :
Oh, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come
back,

I could prevent this storm, and shun thy wrack!

139 Thou ceaseless lackey to eternity,

With some mischance cross Tarquin in his flight:
Devise extremes beyond extremity,

To make him curse this cursed crimeful night:
Let ghastly shadows his lewd eyes affright;
And the dire thought of his committed evil
Shape every bush a hideous shapeless devil.

140 Disturb his hours of rest with restless trances,
Afflict him in his bed with bedrid groans;

Let there bechance him pitiful mischances,
To make him moan, but pity not his moans:
Stone him with harden'd hearts, harder than stones;
And let mild women to him lose their mildness,
Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness.

141 Let him have time to tear his curled hair, Let him have time against himself to rave, Let him have time of Time's help to despair, Let him have time to live a loathed slave, Let him have time a beggar's orts to crave; 16 Retiring: returning.

And time to see one that by alms doth live,
Disdain to him disdainèd scraps to give.

142 'Let him have time to see his friends his foes,
And merry fools to mock at him resort;
Let him have time to mark how slow time goes
In time of sorrow, and how swift and short
His time of folly and his time of sport:
And ever let his unrecalling 1 crime
Have time to wail the abusing of his time.

143 O Time, thou tutor both to good and bad,

Teach me to curse him that thou taught'st this ill! At his own shadow let the thief run mad,

Himself himself seek every hour to kill!

Such wretched hands such wretched blood should spill:

For who so base would such an office have

As slanderous death's-man to so base a slave?

144 The baser is he, coming from a king,

To shame his hope with deeds degenerate.
The mightier man, the mightier is the thing
That makes him honour'd, or begets him hate;
For greatest scandal waits on greatest state.
The moon being clouded, presently is miss'd,
But little stars may hide them when they list.

145 The crow may bathe his coal-black wings in mire, And unperceived fly with the filth away;

But if the like the snow-white swan desire,
The stain upon his silver down will stay.
Poor grooms are sightless night, kings glorious day.

16 Unrecalling: not to be recalled.

Gnats are unnoted whereso'er they fly,
But eagles gazed upon with every eye.

146 Out, idle words, servants to shallow fools!
Unprofitable sounds, weak arbitrators!
Busy yourselves in skill-contending schools,
Debate where leisure serves with dull debaters;
To trembling clients be you mediators:

For me, I force 1 not argument a straw,

Since that my case is past the help of law.

147 'In vain I rail at Opportunity,

At Time, at Tarquin, and uncheerful Night;
In vain I cavil with my infamy,

In vain I spurn at my confirm'd despite :
This helpless smoke of words doth me no right.
The remedy indeed to do me good,

Is to let forth my foul defiled blood.

148 'Poor hand, why quiver'st thou at this decree? Honour thyself to rid me of this shame;

For if I die, my honour lives in thee,

But if I live, thou liv'st in my defame :
Since thou couldst not defend thy loyal dame,
And wast afear'd to scratch her wicked foe,
Kill both thyself and her for yielding so.'

149 This said, from her betumbled couch she starteth,
To find some desperate instrument of death:
But this no-slaughter-house no tool imparteth,
To make more vent for passage of her breath,
Which thronging through her lips so vanisheth
As smoke from Ætna, that in air consumes,
Or that which from dischargèd cannon fumes.
Force' regard or value.