New Yearʼs Poems
The idea of
time as a trope for a New Yearʼs poem may derive from the
January 1826 issue of the
Evangelical Magazine.
For each January issue of the magazine, it had become a tradition to devote the monthly “Poetry” section to verse heralding the New Year.
For the
January 1826 issue—the latest New Yearʼs issue that
Ruskin could have seen before beginning his own poem—the poem “For the
New Year—1826“
is subheaded “Time” like
Ruskinʼs own poem for the New Year. The magazineʼs poet is
Aliquis, a contributor
who gained almost exclusive ownership over this annual feature, developing the genre into a complex, multipart ode that filled the allotted space for poetry
(see
New Yearʼs Poems: The New Yearʼs Ode Tradition in the Evangelical Magazine).
Aliquisʼs ode for 1826 is divided into three parts, the two enclosing parts each entitled “Time”,
and the middle part entitled “Eternity”. An epigraph for the whole of the ode contextualizes the opening question of Ruskinʼs poem,
“whats time a figure or a sense”. Aliquis quotes Hosea 12:10, “I have used similitudes”
(the Lord says: “I have also spoken by the prophets, and I have multiplied visions, and used similitudes, by the ministry of the prophets”).
In the first part, “Time”, Aliquis proceeds to multiply similitudes, each stanza consisting of a series of figures that compare to an attribute of time.
For example, in stanza one, subtitled “Swift” as one attribute of time, each line presents a similitude to the swift passage of time,
reserving the final line to summarize the attribute in the subtitle:
The sun, rejoicing in his race;
The post, whose tidings spurn delay;
The ships, that scud the watery space;
The eagle, darting on his prey;
The ebbing tide, that sinks away;
The meteor flitting through the skies;
The watchmanʼs night, the hirelingʼs day,
Denote how time incessant flies.
Four more stanzas repeat this pattern, each describing a different attribute of time—“Short”, “Uncertain”, “Unsubstantial”, “Important”.
Aliquisʼs similitudes correspond to a figure, the term used by Ruskin in the question he poses at the start of his poem, “Time”:
“whats time a figure or a sense”? The alternative term, sense, is explained in another probable source for Ruskinʼs poem,
“On Emblems”, a dialogue between a father and daughter in Evenings at Home by Arthur Aikin and Laetetia Barbauld.
The father defines an emblem as “‘a visible image of an invisible thing’” and goes on to explain:
“There are certain notions that we form in our minds without the help of our eyes, or any of our senses.
Thus, Virtue, Vice, Honour, Disgrace, Time, Death, and the like, are not sensible objects, but ideas of the understanding. . . .
Now it sometimes happens that we wish to represent one of these in a visible form; that is, to offer something to the sight
that shall raise a similar notion in the minds of the beholders. In order to do this, we must take some action or circumstance
belonging to it, capable of being expressed by painting or sculpture”.
The fatherʼs explanation is underpinned by John Lockeʼs psychology. Time can be described only figuratively, not nominally,
since we cannot perceive time as such. Nominal essence, what we name our perceptions of qualities of a sensible object,
is not available for time: as Ruskin remarks of time, “heʼs not a quality of that Iʼm sure”.
While Ruskin does ascribe qualities to time (“time is so quick”), as does Aliquis (“how time incessant flies”),
their qualities are drawn from figural similitudes of swiftness, shortness,
and so on, not from observances of time as such. As Aliquis asks at the start of the second part of his ode, “Eternity who can define?”
Both of
Ruskinʼs probable sources, however, pursue a more complex tone than
Ruskinʼs in their similitudes. In
Aliquisʼs ode,
apropos of similitudes drawn from the prophets as declared by the epigraph from
Hosea
(and from
Job,
Ecclesiastes, and
Matthew in additional epigraphs for each part), the metaphorical attributes of time constitute an argument for
a darker, more admonitory reflection on the coming New Year than what is suggested by
Ruskinʼs poem. This argument is presented straightforwardly in a letter to the editor,
“Reflections Suited to the Opening Year”, submitted to the the same issue containing
Aliquisʼs ode.
Its tenor is typical of prose pieces submitted to January issues of the
Evangelical Magazine. The “suitable question with which to commence a new period of our mortal existence”
in the New Year is drawn from
2 Samuel 19:34, “How long have I to live?” (
G.B., “Reflections Suited to the Opening Year”, 7).
In the first part of
Aliquisʼs ode, the closing lines of each stanza steadily march toward the same bleak question:
“Denote how time incessant flies”—“Prefigure the short life of man”—“Show Timeʼs events uncertain all”—“Timeʼs gifts but vain and false attest”—“For
he shall life immortal gain, / Who lives to
God, and dies in peace”. In the second part, if the attributes of eternity, like those of time, cannot be perceived directly,
a picture of eternal life is presented as confidently as the certitude of death. In the third part, a return to scriptural analogies builds toward a millenial promise of “Time” resulting in universal peace
and a world converted to Christianity: “Here jarring sects in one great work unite, / . . . / And every kingdom shall their Saviour own, / And every language shall express his praise”
(
Aliquis, “For the New Year—1826“, 14–15).
The Emblem of Time
Ruskinʼs poem, “Time”, differs from Aliquisʼs ode not only in confining his similitude to a single “figure” or emblem of Time;
that figure is also circumscribed within a space that excludes reflections on death and transformation, which are encouraged
by contributions to the Evangelical Magazine.
In this respect, his poem is narrower compared not only to Aliquisʼs complex ode but even to Aikin and Barbauldʼs dialogue “On Emblems”,
which is his evident source for the visible attributes of the emblem, Time. Ruskin omits how, in the dialogue, that emblem is evolved from a traditrional emblem of Death.
The girl, Cecilia, turns her Papaʼs attention to that figure. The emphasis of the dialogue, however, unlike the religious purpose of the magazine pieces,
seems focused on distinguishing sense perception from analogical reasoning:
C. I have a figure of Death in my fable‐book. I suppose that is emblematical?
P. Certainly, or you could not know that it meant Death. How is he represented?
C. He is nothing but bones, and he holds a scythe in one hand, and an hour‐glass in the other.
P. Well—how do you interpret these emblems?
C. I suppose he is all bones, because nothing but bones are left after a dead body has lain long in the grave.
P. True. This, however, is not so properly an emblem, as the real and visible effect of death.
Yet, if Aikin and Barbauldʼs main purpose in the dialogue is rational and philosophical, the analysis of the emblem shades into a scripture lesson on the fraility of life,
which Ruskin omits from his poem. While appropriating the emblematic details from the dialogue, he divorces his figure of Time from that of Death,
which, in the dialogue, is used explain those details:
P. But the scythe?
C. Is not that because death mows down every thing?
P. It is. No instrument could so properly represent the wide‐wasting sway of death, which sweeps down the race of animals, like flowers falling under the hand of the mower.
It is a simile used in the Scriptures.
C. The hour‐glass, I suppose, is to show people their time is come.
P. Right. In the hour‐glass that Death holds, all the sand is run out from the upper to the lower part.
Have you never observed upon a monument an old figure, with wings, and a scythe, and with his head bald all but a single lock before?
C. O yes;—and I have been told it is Time.
P. Well—and what do you make of it? Why is he old?
C. O! because time has lasted a long while.
P. And why has he wings?
C. Because time is swift, and fies away.
P. What does his scythe mean?
C. I suppose that is, because he destroys and cuts down every thing like Death.
P. True. I think, however, a weapon rather slower in its operation, as a pick axe, would have been more suitable to the gradual action of time.
But what is his single lock of hair for?
C. I have been thinking, and cannot make it out.
P. I thought that would puzzle you. It relates to time as giving opportunity for doing any thing.
It is to be seized as it presents itself, or it will escape, and cannot be recovered. Thus the proverb says,
“Take time by the forelock.” Well—now you understand what emblems are.
Aikin and Barbauld land on a figure of Time rationalized with a pickax, but the purpose of that emblematic implement is just as gruesome as mowing with a scythe.
Ruskin veers away altogether, from scripture to pagan myth, and from death to reverend age: “what is he then”, the speaker asks; “oh I remember now he is a god /
entitled saturn heʼs a heathen god”—Saturn or the ancient Cronus of the Greeks, whose scythe is identified with a golden age of peaceful, agricultural arts.