James Vila Blake, Sonnets from Marcus Aurelius 6

6.  

Ποταμός τις ἐστι τῶν γινομένων καὶ ῥεῦμα βίαιόν ὁ αἰών: ἅμα τε γὰρ ὥφθη ἕκαστον καὶ παρενήνεκται, καὶ ἄλλο παραφέρεται, τὸ δὲ ἐνεχθήσεται. 

Time is like a river, or a streaming on, of all things that come to pass, even a violent flood of them. Each thing is no sooner seen than swept past, and another is sweeping by, and this also will be carried away. 

—Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.43 

6. 

There be drops small, and large drops, all being rain, 

Making the ocean, rivers and rivulets; 

There be moments slender, and mighty moments amain—

Time’s tide, or torrents of hours, or minutary jets. 

The brooks and rivers that to oceans run, 

Navies and nations on their bosoms bear; 

The pendule’s pulses into centuries done 

Torrential whirl alike the foul and fair. 

All things rush on. One doth but well arrive 

Before ’tis gone—another hath his room— 

That too is sped in cresty fog and dive— 

All with distinguished shapes, all to one doom. 

Here do I halt to see them swirling by; 

And as they go, I drown them in mine eye. 

IMAGE: Hermann Herzog, Raging River (c. 1860)