Authors:
  • The longest time that man may live,
    The lapse of generations of his race,
    The continent entire of time itself,
    Bears not proportion to Eternity;
    Huge as a fraction of a grain of dew
    Co-measured with the broad, unbounded ocean!
    There is the time of man--his proper time,
    Looking at which this life is but a gust,
    A puff of breath, that's scarcely felt ere gone!

    James Sheridan Knowles (1838). “The Maid of Mariendorpt: A Play, in Five Acts”, p.107