servant, Opportunity Betrayed the hours thou gav’st me to repose, Cancelled my fortunes, and enchained me To endless date of never-ending woes? Time’s office is to fine the hate of foes, To eat up errors by opinion bred, Not spend the dowry of a lawful bed. 

 “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 glitt’ring golden towers; 

 “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, To spoil antiquities of hammered steel, And turn the giddy round of Fortune’s wheel; 

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

 “Why work’st thou mischief in thy pilgrimage, Unless thou couldst return to make amends? One poor retiring minute in an age Would purchase thee a thousand thousand friends, Lending him wit that to bad debtors lends. O, this dread night, wouldst thou one hour come back, I could prevent this storm and shun thy wrack! 

 “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. 

 “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 hard’ned hearts harder than stones, And let mild women to him lose their mildness, Wilder to him than tigers in their wildness. 

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

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