Poems about Time

tagore - butterfly

The butterfly counts not months but moments,
and has time enough.

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Time is a wealth of change,
but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth.

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Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time
like dew on the tip of a leaf.

– Rabindranath Tagore

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Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-lived phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleets,
And do whate’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;
But I forbid thee one most heinous crime:
O, carve not with thy hours my love’s fair brow,
Nor draw no lines there with thine antique pen;
Him in thy course untainted do allow
For beauty’s pattern to succeeding men.
Yet, do thy worst, old Time: despite thy wrong,
My love shall in my verse ever live young.

– William Shakespeare, Sonnet 19

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 “Time is very slow for those who wait;
very fast for those who are scared;
very long for those who lament;
very short for those who celebrate; but for those who love, time is eternal.”

– William Shakespeare

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