Laudator Temporis Acti

Chaucer, Clerk's Tale 116-126, from Canterbury Tales:

And thenketh, lord, among youre thoghtes wyse
How that oure dayes passe in sondry wyse,
For thogh we slepe, or wake, or rome, or ryde,
Ay fleeth the tyme, it nyl no man abyde.
And thogh youre grene youthe floure as yit,        120
In crepeth age alwey as stille as stoon,
And deeth manaceth every age, and smyt
In ech estaat, for ther escapeth noon;
And al so certein as we knowe echoon
That we shul deye, as uncerteyn we alle        125
Been of that day, whan deeth shal on us falle.

Modernized by Nevill Coghill:

                                                   Invoke
Your wisdom, ponder carefully and see
How variously days pass; the seasons flee
Away in sleeping, waking, roaming, riding.
Time passes on and there is no abiding.
Still in the flower of your youth's delights
Age creeps upon you, silent as a stone.
Death menaces all ages and he smites
The high and low, the known and the unknown;
We see for certain, are obliged to own
That we must die, but we are ignorant all
Of when the hour's to come, the blow to fall.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Pierre de Ronsard (1524-1585), Odes IV.13 (tr. Norman R. Shapiro):

Gone is my strength, sweet youth is fled,
My teeth are black, and white my head;
Sickly, my nerves are weaker growing;
So cold am I that in my veins
No blood of ruddy hue remains:
Naught but a reddish liquid flowing.

Farewell my lyre, farewell my belles,
You, once my tender damosels;
Farewell, I sense my days' decline:
Old age, alas, has borne away
The pastimes of a younger day,
Leaving but hearth, and bed, and wine.

Head bowed with ills and many a year—
Indeed, too many of both, I fear—
I feel the biting agony
Of care—here, there, within, without—
And ever turn my face
To see if Death is stalking me;

Death, who will lead me, when he please,
Where one called Pluto takes his ease,
Welcoming to his dismal den
Any and all who venture thence;
Easy to enter, ah! but whence
Never does one return again.

The French, transcribed from Ronsard's Oeuvres (Paris: Gabriel Buon, 1584), p. 357:

Ma douce iouuance est passée,
Ma premiere force est cassée,
I'ay la dent noire & le chef blanc,
Mes nerfs sont dissous, & mes veines,
Tant i'ay le corps froid, ne sont pleines
Que d'vne eau rousse en lieu de sang.

Adieu ma lyre, adieu fillettes,
Iadis mes douces amourettes,
Adieu, ie sens venir ma fin:
Nul passetemps de ma ieunesse
Ne m'accompagne en la vieillesse,
Que le feu, le lict & le vin.

I'ay la teste toute eslourdie
De trop d'ans & de maladie,
De tous costez le soin me mord:
Et soit que i'aille ou que ie tarde,
Tousiours apres moi ie regarde
Si ie verray venir la Mort:

Qui doit, ce me semble, à toute heure
Me mener là bas où demeure
Ie ne sçay quel Pluton, qui tient
Ouuert à tous venans vn antre,
Où bien facilement on entre,
Mais d'où iamais on ne reuient.

The same, tr. Fred Chappell:

My pliant youthfulness is gone,
  My stamina all broken down,
  My teeth are black, and white my head,
  My heart is weak, my nerves are shot
  And through my veins runs nothing but
  Icy water instead of blood.

Adieu to poetry, adieu
  To all the girls that are and were;
  Goodbye, I feel the end come on.
  Three joys only of younger days
  Remain with me as constancies:
  My bed, my fire, my glass of wine.

Numerous years and numberless days
  Weigh me down with illnesses,
  Fears gnaw my every hope;
  Though I fly onward like the wind
  Every time I glance behind
  I find that Death is catching up.

This Death, who means to take my hand
  And lead me to an unknown land,
  Whose final purpose I cannot learn,
  Holds that door open through which we go
  To some dark land beyond, below,
  The door admitting no return.

The same, tr. John Payne:

My pleasant youth is passed away;
Spent is the strength in me to-day;
Black are my teeth and white my head;
My nerves are slack and in my veins,
So cold my body is, remains,
In lieu of blood, but water red.

Adieu, my lyre and lasses fair,
That were my winsome loves whilere!
Adieu! I feel mine end draw nigh.
No pastime of that youth of mine,
Save only bed and fire and wine,
To comfort me in age, have I.

All with infirmities and weight
Of years astonied is my pate:
Cares from all quarters bite on me;
And still, where'er I go or stand,
I fearful look on every hand,
Lest Death upon my track I see,

Death, anytide which may, God wot,
Bear me where harbours I know not
What manner Pluto, who an inn
For all keeps open, high and low,
Whereas one enters eath enow,
But whence none ever out might win.

Ronsard's ode is an imitation of Anacreon, fragment 44 (tr. C.M. Bowra):

My temples are already hoary, and my head is white; no longer is graceful youth with me, and my teeth are old. No more is a long span of sweet life left to me. Often in fear of Tartarus I lament this; for dread is the pit of death, and hard the way down to it. For there is no way by which a man who has gone down can come up.

πολιοὶ μὲν ἡμὶν ἤδη
κρόταφοι κάρη τε λευκόν,
χαρίεσσα δ' οὐκέτ' ἥβη
πάρα, γηραλέοι δ' ὀδόντες,
γλυκεροῦ δ' οὐκέτι πολλὸς
βιότου χρόνος λέλειπται.

διὰ ταῦτ' ἀνασταλύζω
θαμὰ Τάρταρον δεδοικώς·
Ἀίδεω γάρ ἐστι δεινὸς
μυχός, ἀργαλῆ δ' ἐς αὐτὸν
κάτοδος· καὶ γὰρ ἑτοῖμον
καταβάντι μὴ ἀναβῆναι.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Philemon, fragment 117, Greek text in R. Kassel and C. Austin, edd., Poetae Comici Graeci, Vol. VII (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1989), p. 290 (my translation):

(A.) Syra, Syra. (Sy.) What is it? (A.) How are you?
(Sy.) Never ask that when you see an old man
Or an old woman; know at once that it's going badly.

(Α.) Σύρα, Σύρα. (Συ.) τί ἐστι; (Α.) πῶς ἡμῖν ἔχεις;
(Συ.) μηδέποτ' ἐρώτα τοῦτ' ἐπὰν γέροντ' ἴδῃς
ἢ γραῦν τιν'· ἴσθι δ' εὐθὺς ὅτι κακῶς ἔχει.

Latin translation by Jean Le Clerc:

(A.) Syra, Syra. (Sy.) quid est? (A.) quomodo habes?
(Sy.) numquam hoc quaerito, si senem videris,
aut anum; continuo scito male habere.

Latin translation by Hugo Grotius:

(A.) Syra, heus Syra. (Sy.) hem quid me vis? (A.) ut vero vales?
(Sy.) nunquam istud percunctare, senem si videris
anumve; quippe liquido non recte valent.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Euripides, Heracles 637-654 (tr. E.P. Coleridge):

Dear to me is youth, but old age is ever hanging o'er my head, a burden heavier than Aetna's crags, casting its pall of gloom upon my eyes. Oh! never may the wealth of Asia's kings tempt me to barter for houses stored with gold my happy youth, which is in wealth and poverty alike most fair! But old age is gloomy and deathly; I hate it; let it sink beneath the waves! Would it had never found its way to the homes and towns of mortal men, but were still drifting on for ever down the wind.

ά νεότας μοι φίλον· ἄ-
χθος δὲ τὸ γῆρας αἰεί
βαρύτερον Αἴτνας σκοπέλων
ἐπὶ κρατὶ κεῖται, βλεφάρῳ
σκοτεινὸν φάος ἐπικαλύψαν.
μή μοι μήτ' ᾿Ασιήτιδος
τυραννίδος ὄλβος εἴη,
μὴ χρυσοῦ δώματα πλήρη
τᾶς ἥβας ἀντιλαβεῖν,
ἃ καλλίστα μὲν ἐν ὄλβῳ,
καλλίστα δ' ἐν πενίᾳ.
τὸ δὲ λυγρὸν φόνιόν τε γῆ-
ρας μισῶ· κατὰ κυμάτων δ'
ἔρροι, μηδέποτ' ὤφελεν
θνατῶν δώματα καὶ πόλεις
ἐλθεῖν, ἀλλὰ κατ' αἰθέρ' αἰ-
εὶ πτεροῖσι φορείσθαι.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Euripides, fragment 25 (from Aeolus, tr. Christopher Collard and Martin Cropp):

Oh, alas, how true the ancient saying is: we old men are nothing but noise and mere shapes, and we move as imitations of dreams; there is no intelligence in us, yet we think we have good sense.

φεῦ φεῦ, παλαιὸς αἶνος ὡς καλῶς ἔχει·
γέροντες οὐδέν ἐσμεν ἄλλο πλὴν ψόφος
καὶ σχῆμ᾽, ὀνείρων δ᾽ ἕρπομεν μιμήματα·
νοῦς δ᾽ οὐκ ἔνεστιν, οἰόμεσθα δ᾽ εὖ φρονεῖν.

Euripides, fragment 508 (from Melanippe, tr. Collard and Cropp):

What else? An old man is but voice and shadow.

τί δ᾽ ἄλλο; φωνὴ καὶ σκιὰ γέρων ἀνήρ.

The second fragment is one of the exercises for translation in the book I learned Greek from, many years ago—Chase and Phillips, A New Introduction to Greek, p. 39.

Worthington Whittredge, Retrospection
[Restored after removal by Blogger: original date was May 12, 2011.]

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

John Milton, Paradise Lost 11.538-546:

This is old age; but then thou must outlive
Thy youth, thy strength, thy beauty, which will change
To witherd weak and gray; thy Senses then
Obtuse, all taste of pleasure must forgoe,
To what thou hast, and for the Aire of youth
Hopeful and cheerful, in thy blood will reigne
A melancholly damp of cold and dry
To weigh thy spirits down, and last consume
The Balme of Life.

Leonardo da Vinci, Profile of an Old Man

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Lord Chesterfield, Letters to His Son (September 22, 1758):

I should not take all this trouble merely to prolong the fag end of a life, from which I can expect no pleasure, and others no utility; but the cure, or at least the mitigation, of those physical ills which make that life a load while it does last, is worth any trouble and attention.

Id. (July 20, 1764):

As for me, I am just what I was when you left me, that is, nobody. Old age steals upon me insensibly. I grow weak and decrepit, but do not suffer, and so I am content.

Id. (April 22, 1765):

I see and hear these storms from shore, suave mari magno, etc. I enjoy my own security and tranquillity, together with better health than I had reason to expect at my age, and with my constitution: however, I feel a gradual decay, though a gentle one; and I think that I shall not tumble, but slide gently to the bottom of the hill of life. When that will be, I neither know nor care, for I am very weary.

His son died before he did.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Chekhov, Swan Song, Scene I, tr. Ronald Hingley in Anton Chekhov: Twelve Plays (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992; rpt. 1999), p. 27:

Old age — whether you try to wriggle out of it or make the best of it or just act the fool, the fact is your life's over. Sixty-eight years down the drain, damn it! Gone with the wind! The cup's drained, there's just a bit left at the bottom: the dregs. That's the way of it, that's how it is, old man.

In a similar manner Chaucer, Canterbury Tales I, 3891-3894 (Prologue to the Reeve's Tale), represents the allotted span of life as the amount of liquid in a barrel. Let's suppose the barrel contains wine, because Chaucer's father was a vintner. When we are born, the spigot is opened, and the wine starts to spill out. When the barrel is empty, life comes to an end. Here is Nevill Coghill's modern English translation, followed by Chaucer's original Middle English:

Certain, when I was born, so long ago,
Death drew the tap of life and let it flow;
And ever since the tap has done its task,
And now there's little but an empty cask.
My stream of life's but drops upon the rim.

For sikerly, whan I was bore, anon
Deeth drough the tappe of lyf and leet it gon,
And ever sithe hath so the tappe yronne
Til that almoost al empty is the tonne.
The streem of lyf now droppeth on the chymbe.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Fan Chengda (1126-1193), I was moved after looking at myself in a mirror on a spring day (tr. J.D. Schmidt, with his note):

By habit I never gave old age much thought,
And even now my youthful mind soars like a mountain.
But suddenly I begin to compare ages with my neighbors
And am startled to discover how much older I am than they are!
I never looked at myself carefully before,
And kept bragging about my youthful face, pink like a drunkard.
But today I've met my true self in this mirror —
I'm as wan and sallow as a withered lotus.
My body has somehow been magically transformed,
And I will pass my remaining years in infirmity.
I realize it's too late to get all worried about this,
But now that I know, what, alas, can I do?
The old sun and moon have been playing tricks on me,
But it's not worthwhile laughing at them or getting angry.
I must whet the sword that cuts away sadness,
For the lance that turns back time¹ is useless to me now.
Young lads, who noisily celebrate the fair spring festival,
Call me to come out to dance and sing with them.
The very idea of this sets my blood on fire,
And I rise up, strong, to frisk and gambol about!

¹Allusion to the account of a battle between Duke Yang of Lu and Han Gou described in the Huainanzi. When Duke Yang could not finish defeating his enemy before sunset, he waved his lance at the sun, which supposedly moved back toward the east. Index du Houai Nan Tseu (Taipei, repr. 1968), p. 61b.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Po Chü-i (772–846), Spring Outing (tr. Burton Watson):

I mount my horse, ready to go out the gate;
out the gate, pause in uncertainty,
turn my head to speak to my wife,
sure she must be puzzled by all these spring outings.
I know I go on a lot of spring outings,
but what can an old fellow do,
when the ruddy face of youth is fading, fading,
and white hairs continue and continue to appear?
You have ten fingers—use them,
tally up my friends for me.
Say age one hundred is the outside limit—
how many make it into their seventh decade?
Now I am sixty-five
and speeding downhill like a wheel on a slope.
Supposing I should last to seventy,
that leaves me only five springs more.
Faced with spring, not to go out and enjoy it,
one would have to be a fool!

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Herodotus 2.133 (tr. Aubrey de Selincourt):

After the death of his daughter a second calamity fell upon Mycerinus: he received an oracle from Buto to the effect that he was destined to live only for six more years and to die within the seventh....Mycerinus, convinced by this that his doom was sealed, had innumerable lamps made, by the light of which he set himself every evening to drink and be merry, and never ceased day or night from the pursuit of pleasure, travelling about from place to place amongst the pools and woodlands, wherever he heard of a particularly delightful spot. His object in this was by turning night into day to extend the six remaining years of his life to twelve, and so to convict the oracle of falsehood.

μετὰ δὲ τῆς θυγατρὸς τὸ πάθος δεύτερα τούτῳ τῷ βασιλέι τάδε γενέσθαι· ἐλθεῖν οἱ μαντήιον ἐκ Βουτοῦς πόλιος ὡς μέλλοι ἓξ ἔτεα μοῦνον βιοὺς τῷ ἑβδόμῳ τελευτήσειν....ταῦτα ἀκούσαντα τὸν Μυκερῖνον, ὡς κατακεκριμένων ἤδη οἱ τούτων, λύχνα ποιησάμενον πολλά, ὅκως γίνοιτο νύξ, ἀνάψαντα αὐτὰ πίνειν τε καὶ εὐπαθέειν, οὔτε ἡμέρης οὔτε νυκτὸς ἀνιέντα, ἔς τε τὰ ἕλεα καὶ τὰ ἄλσεα πλανώμενον καὶ ἵνα πυνθάνοιτο εἶναι ἐνηβητήρια ἐπιτηδεότατα. ταῦτα δὲ ἐμηχανᾶτο θέλων τὸ μαντήιον ψευδόμενον ἀποδέξαι, ἵνα οἱ δυώδεκα ἔτεα ἀντὶ ἓξ ἐτέων γένηται, αἱ νύκτες ἡμέραι ποιεύμεναι.

George Saintsbury, Matthew Arnold (Edinburgh: William Blackswood and Sons, 1902), p. 14:

The foolish good sense of Mr Toots would probably observe—and justly—that before six years, or six months, or even six days were over, King Mycerinus must have got very sleepy.

From Matthew Arnold, Mycerinus:

The rest I give to joy. Even while I speak,
My sand runs short; and—as yon star-shot ray,
Hemm'd by two banks of cloud, peers pale and weak,
Now, as the barrier closes, dies away—
Even so do past and future intertwine,
Blotting this six years' space, which yet is mine.

Six years—six little years—six drops of time!
Yet suns shall rise, and many moons shall wane,
And old men die, and young men pass their prime,
And languid pleasure fade and flower again,
And the dull Gods behold, ere these are flown,
Revels more deep, joy keener than their own.

Into the silence of the groves and woods
I will go forth; though something would I say—
Something—yet what, I know not; for the Gods
The doom they pass revoke not, nor delay;
And prayers, and gifts, and tears, are fruitless all,
And the night waxes, and the shadows fall.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Montaigne, On Repentance (Essais 3.2, tr. Charles Cotton):

But, methinks, our souls, in old age, are subject to more troublesome maladies and imperfections than in youth; I said the same when young and when I was reproached with the want of a beard; and I say so now that my gray hairs give me some authority. We call the difficulty of our humors and the disrelish of present things wisdom; but, in truth, we do not so much forsake vices as we change them, and, in my opinion, for worse. Besides a foolish and feeble pride, an impertinent prating, froward and insociable humors, superstition, and a ridiculous desire of riches when we have lost the use of them, I find there more envy, injustice and malice. Age imprints more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face; and souls are never, or very rarely seen, that in growing old do not smell sour and musty. Man moves all together, both toward his perfection and decay.

Mais il me semble qu'en la vieillesse, nos ames sont subjectes à des maladies et imperfections plus importunes, qu'en la jeunesse : Je le disois estant jeune, lors on me donnoit de mon menton par le nez : je le dis encore à cette heure, que mon poil gris m'en donne le credit : Nous appellons sagesse, la difficulté de nos humeurs, le desgoust des choses presentes : mais à la verité, nous ne quittons pas tant les vices, comme nous les changeons : et, à mon opinion, en pis. Outre une sotte et caduque fierté, un babil ennuyeux, ces humeurs espineuses et inassociables, et la superstition, et un soin ridicule des richesses, lors que l'usage en est perdu, j'y trouve plus d'envie, d'injustice et de malignité. Elle nous attache plus de rides en l'esprit qu'au visage : et ne se void point d'ames, ou fort rares, qui en vieillissant ne sentent l'aigre et le moisi. L'homme marche entier, vers son croist et vers son décroist.

---

Edward Hoagland, "Heaven and Nature," from Heart's Desire (1988; rpt. New York: Touchstone, 1991), p. 360:

Nobody expects to trust his body overmuch after the age of fifty. Incipient cataracts or arthritis, outlandish snores, tooth-grinding, ankles that threaten to turn are part of the game. But not to trust one's mind? That's a surprise. The single attribute that older people were supposed to have (we thought as boys) was a stodgy dependability, a steady temperance or caution. Adults might be vain, unimaginative, pompous, and callous, but they did have their affairs rightly in hand. It was not till my thirties that I began to know friends who were in their fifties on equal terms, and I remember being amused, piqued, irritated, and slightly bemused to learn that some of them still felt as marginal or rebellious or in a quandary about what to do with themselves for the next dozen years as my contemporaries were likely to. That close to retirement, some of them harbored a deep-seated contempt for the organizations they had been working for, ready to walk away from almost everybody they had known and the efforts and expertise of decades with very little sentiment.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

William Butler Yeats, The Lamentation of the Old Pensioner:

Although I shelter from the rain
Under a broken tree,
My chair was nearest to the fire
In every company
That talked of love or politics,
Ere Time transfigured me.

Though lads are making pikes again
For some conspiracy,
And crazy rascals rage their fill
At human tyranny,
My contemplations are of Time
That has transfigured me.

There's not a woman turns her face
Upon a broken tree,
And yet the beauties that I loved
Are in my memory;
I spit into the face of Time
That has transfigured me.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni

Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.13 (tr. John Henry Freese):

[1] Older men and those who have passed their prime have in most cases characters opposite to those of the young. For, owing to their having lived many years and having been more often deceived by others or made more mistakes themselves, and since most human things turn out badly, they are positive about nothing, and in everything they show an excessive lack of energy.

[2] They always "think," but "know" nothing; and in their hesitation they always add "perhaps," or "maybe"; all their statements are of this kind, never unqualified.

[3] They are malicious; for malice consists in looking upon the worse side of everything. Further, they are always suspicious owing to mistrust, and mistrustful owing to experience.

[4] And neither their love nor their hatred is strong for the same reasons; but, according to the precept of Bias, they love as if they would one day hate, and hate as if they would one day love.

[5] And they are little-minded, because they have been humbled by life; for they desire nothing great or uncommon, but only the necessaries of life.

[6] They are not generous, for property is one of these necessaries, and at the same time, they know from experience how hard it is to get and how easy to lose.

[7] And they are cowardly and inclined to anticipate evil, for their state of mind is the opposite of that of the young; they are chilled, whereas the young are hot, so that old age paves the way for cowardice, for fear is a kind of chill.

[8] And they are fond of life, especially in their last days, because desire is directed towards that which is absent and men especially desire what they lack.

[9] And they are unduly selfish, for this also is littleness of mind. And they live not for the noble, but for the useful, more than they ought, because they are selfish; for the useful is a good for the individual, whereas the noble is good absolutely.

[10] And they are rather shameless than modest; for since they do not care for the noble so much as for the useful, they pay little attention to what people think.

[11] And they are little given to hope owing to their experience, for things that happen are mostly bad and at all events generally turn out for the worse, and also owing to their cowardice.

[12] They live in memory rather than in hope; for the life that remains to them is short, but that which is past is long, and hope belongs to the future, memory to the past. This is the reason of their loquacity; for they are incessantly talking of the past, because they take pleasure in recollection.

[13] Their outbursts of anger are violent, but feeble; of their desires some have ceased, while others are weak, so that they neither feel them nor act in accordance with them, but only from motives of gain. Hence men of this age are regarded as self-controlled, for their desires have slackened, and they are slaves to gain.

[14] In their manner of life there is more calculation than moral character, for calculation is concerned with that which is useful, moral character with virtue. If they commit acts of injustice it is due to vice rather than to insolence.

[15] The old, like the young, are inclined to pity, but not for the same reason; the latter show pity from humanity, the former from weakness, because they think that they are on the point of suffering all kinds of misfortunes, and this is one of the reasons that incline men to pity. That is why the old are querulous, and neither witty nor fond of laughter; for a querulous disposition is the opposite of a love of laughter.

Labels: eheu fugaces labuntur anni