I have written about time in poetry last year in my “Time in Poetry – Haiku”, but
after re-watching Ran by Kurosawa and
Titus by Taymor (both films are
pretty wild interpretations of Shakespearian plays) I came across this verse
from Macbeth regarding time:
To-morrow,
and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps
in this petty pace from day to day,
To the
last syllable of recorded time;
And all
our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way
to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's
but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That
struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then
is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by
an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying
nothing.
I liked
the idea of time being a succession of meaningless syllables uttered by a
passing shadow and was intrigued to discover more of Shakespeare’s vision of
time which always seem so linked to fate and the inevitability of death.
I found
the following:
...Things
without all remedy
Should
be without regard: what’s done, is done.
With these
words Lady Macbeth tries to reassure her husband and later herself by muttering
“What’s done cannot be undone”.
In Othello
Shakespeare writes of “the vale of years” not to be confused with the vale of
tears though the echo is suggestive. In the 15th century the Vale
came to be a metaphor for the span of life between the peaks of birth and death
in which we live our careworn lives. "Vale of trouble and woe,"
"vale of weeping," "vale of misery," and "vale of
tears" illustrate typical uses of the word before Shakespeare. Othello's
phrase, however, seems intended in a more neutral sense; the "vale of
years" is the broad, flat stretch of middle age beyond the slope of youth.
I’d like
to conclude with 2 sonnets; XII and LX (like the hours and minutes...)
SONNET
XII
When I do count the clock that tells the time,
And see the brave day sunk in hideous night;
When I behold the violet past prime,
And sable curls, all silvered o'er with white;
When lofty trees I see barren of leaves,
Which erst from heat did canopy the herd,
And summer's green all girded up in sheaves,
Borne on the bier with white and bristly beard,
Then of thy beauty do I question make,
That thou among the wastes of time must go,
Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake
And die as fast as they see others grow;
And nothing 'gainst Time's scythe can make defence
Save breed, to brave him when he takes thee hence.
SONNET
LX
Like as the waves make towards the pebbled shore,
So do our minutes hasten to their end;
Each changing place with that which
goes before,
In sequent toil all forwards do
contend.
Nativity, once in the main of light,
Crawls to maturity, wherewith being
crown'd,
Crooked eclipses 'gainst his glory
fight,
And Time that gave doth now his gift
confound.
Time doth transfix the flourish set on
youth
And delves the parallels in beauty's
brow,
Feeds on the rarities of nature's
truth,
And nothing stands but for his scythe
to mow:
And yet to times in hope, my verse
shall stand
Praising thy worth, despite his cruel
hand.
