Troilus and Cressida 'Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back'

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:02]Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his [music] back, wherein he puts alms for oblivion, a great-sized monster of ingratitudes.

[00:00:14]No scraps of good deeds [music] past devoured as fast as they are made, forgot as soon as done.

[00:00:20]Perseverance, [music] dear my lord, keeps honor bright.

[00:00:25]To have [music] done is to hang quite out of fashion, like rusty mail in monumental mockery. We take the instant [music] way.

[00:00:32]For honor travels in a strait so narrow where one butt goes abreast. Keep [music] then the path, for emulation had a thousand sons that one by one pursue.

[00:00:41]If you give way or hedge aside from the direct forthright line to an entertide, they rush by and leave you hindmost.

[00:00:49]Or like the gallant horse fallen in first rank, lie there for pavement to the abject rear, overrun and trampled on. For what they do in present less than yours in past must owe a top yours.

[00:01:02]For time is like a fashionable host that slightly shakes his parting [music] guest by the hand.

[00:01:08]And with his arms outstretched, as if to fly, welcomes in the comer, ever smiles, and farewell goes out sighing. [music] O, let not virtue seek remuneration for the thing it was.

[00:01:23]For beauty, wit, high birth, [music] vigor of bone, desert of service, love, >> [music] >> charity, friendship, are all subjects to envious and calumniating time.

[00:01:36]One touch of nature makes the whole world kin. But all with one consent praise [music] newborn gods.

[00:01:46]Though they are made and molded of things past, [music] the present eye praises the present object. Then marvel not, thou great and complete man, that all the Greeks begin to worship Ajax.

[00:02:00]Since things in motion sooner catch the eye than what not stirs, the cry went once on thee.

[00:02:06]And yet it may again and still it might, if thou was not entombed thyself alive and case thy reputation in thy tent, whose glorious deeds in these fields of late made emulous missions amongst the gods themselves AND DROVE GREAT MARS TO FACTION.