William Shakespeare (1564–1616)

Ulysses.—Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back,

Wherein he puts alms for oblivion,

A great-sized monster of ingratitudes:

Those scraps are good deeds past: which are devoured

As fast as they are made, forgot as soon

As done: Perséverance, dear my lord,

Keeps honor bright: to have done is to hang

Quite out of fashion, like a rusty mail

In monumental mockery. Take the instant way;

For honor travels in a strait so narrow,

Where one but goes abreast: keep then the path;

For emulation hath a thousand sons,

That one by one pursue: if you give way,

Or hedge aside from the direct forthright,

Like to an entered tide they all rush by,

And leave you hindmost;—

Or, like a gallant horse fallen in first rank,

Lie there for pavement to the abject rear,

O’er-run and trampled on: then what they do in present,

Though less than yours in past, must o’ertop yours:

For Time is like a fashionable host,

That slightly shakes his parting guest by the hand;

And with his arms outstretched, as he would fly,

Grasps in the comer: Welcome ever smiles,

And farewell goes out sighing. O, let not virtue seek

Remuneration for the thing it was;

For beauty, wit,

High birth, vigor of bone, desert in service,

Love, friendship, charity, are subjects all

To envious and calumniating Time.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin,—

That all, with one consent, praise new-born gawds,

Though they are made and moulded of things past;

And give to dust, that is a little gilt,

More laud than gilt o’er-dusted.

The present eye praises the present object:

Then marvel not, thou great and complete man,

That all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax;

Since things in motion sooner catch the eye,

Than what not stirs. The cry went once on thee

And still it might; and yet it may again,

If thou wouldst not entomb thyself alive,

And case thy reputation in thy tent;

Whose glorious deeds, but in these fields of late,

Made emulous missions ’mongst the gods themselves,

And drave great Mars to faction.