Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

Few and evil are my years; it’s well they are few, since they are so evil. Lord, suffer me not to build tabernacles here, and comforts and crosses do also fly away apace. Day and night are like two worms that hourly gnaw the root of this tree of life and comforts thereof, yea, sorrows also pass as the waters that pass away. I will not be daunted with troubles, nor exalted with enjoyments: both are short-lived: heaven or hell swallow up both. I will look through clouds and thick mists on a fair day beyond, and I will despise these glorious gleams that will end in horrid mists of eternal darkness.

Comment

Comment

Heywood lived another 11 years.

I’m curious about his reading. For example, one of the few recent appearances of “vail” is in Troilus and Cressida:

Look, Hector, how the sun begins to set;
How ugly night comes breathing at his heels;
Even with the vail and dark’ning of the sun,
To close the day up, Hector’s life is done.
(Shakespeare 1998)

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Original

And how swiftly doth time run on, and hours, days, weeks, month, years, do pass like a swift river by a city, and never turn again. All things here below are upon the wheel of change, nothing continues in a fixed station, generations of men and women, enter upon, and pass off the stage of the world apace, the sun also riseth and the sun goeth down, the wind whirleth about continually, rivers do run into the sea, and thence vapours do ascend, and are emptied out of the clouds upon the Earth (Eccl. 1 4-7). Yea, the stage itself must be taken down, this visible world upon which are acted so many comedies and tragedies, the two sides of this great globe must be folded together, as an old vesture they must be changed into another form, but (I think) not annihilated (Psal. 102 26). I expect no constancy in this inconstant world. The world passeth away, and the lust thereof. Heaven and earth pass away. The glory of this world fadeth as grass. It shall not be my centre. I will fix the anchor of my hope beyond the vail [the setting of the sun]. The immutable god shall henceforth be my strength, treasure, refuge and portion for ever. Farewell transitory, transient world, welcome a city not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Yea, life itself is short, every day and year added to my life is so much taken from it. It’s a flitting shade, a weaver’s shuttle, a flying eagle, a post, a watch by night, we fly away. How soon are these 60 years of my life past, like a tale that’s told, a dream when one awakes, it’s but t’ other day that I was an infant, a child, a schoolboy, and now I am grown of the older sort, and anon I shall not be here my place will know me no more : my soul must launch into the Ocean of Eternity and my body be laid in a bed of dust. My life is not to be reckoned by years, but months, days, hours, hand-breadth, yea it’s as nothing before the Lord (Psal. 39 4 5). Few and evil are my years, it’s well they are few since they are so evil. Lord, suffer me not to build tabernacles here: and comforts and crosses do also fly away apace, day and night are like two worms that hourly gnaw the root of this tree of life and comforts thereof, yea sorrows also pass as the waters that pass away. I will not be daunted with troubles, nor exalted with enjoyments, both are short-lived: heaven or hell swallow up both. I will look through clouds and thick mists on a fair day beyond, and I will despise these glorious gleams that will end in horrid mists of eternal darkness.

478 words.

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• Death (10) ·
• Ecclesiastes (1) ·
• Heywood, Oliver (1630-1702) (34), Bolton-born nonconformist minister and diarist, active in the West Riding, resident at Northowram, ejected for his beliefs ·
• Immortality (1) ·
• Nonconformism (47) ·
• 📌Northowram (14) ·
• Presbyterianism (20) ·
• Protestantism (25) ·
• Psalms (13) ·
• Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) (14) ·
• Troilus and Cressida (1) ·

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