Works and Days

“ I can neither scold nor quarrel at this insignificant implement of household services; she is less than a cat, and just better than a deal Dresser. What I can do, and do overdo, is to walk, but deadly long are the days—these summer all-day days, with but a half hour's candlelight and no firelight. ”

“ The next which presents itself in the 'Works and Days' owes its interest as much to the fact that it occurs almost totidem verbis in Homer, as to its resemblance to a whole host of later proverbs and adages amongst all nations. When Hesiod would fain enforce the advantage of doing right, and acting justly, without constraint, he, as it were, glances at the case of those who do not see this till justice has taught them its lesson, and says, in the language of proverb,
"The fool first suffers, and is after wise." ”

“ It is customary to say, "Take care of the small sums, and the large will take care of themselves." With equal wisdom and more necessity may it be said, "Watch the minutes, and the hours and days will be safe." ”

“ But when the House-carrier [25] climbs up the plants from the earth to escape the Pleiades, then it is no longer the season for digging vineyards, but to whet your sickles and rouse up your slaves. Avoid shady seats and sleeping until dawn in the harvest season, when the sun scorches the body: Then be busy, and bring home your fruits, getting up early to make your livelihood sure. For dawn takes away a third part of your work, dawn advances a man on his journey and advances him in his work, — dawn which appears and sets many men on their road, and puts yokes on many oxen. ”

“ Imagine, if you please, a solid month dedicated, without interruption, to a single purpose,—to the study of a new language, an untried science, an unexplored field of history, a fresh department of philosophy, or to some new sphere of action, some labor of humanity, some godlike charity,—and what visions must not rise of untold accumulations of knowledge, of unnumbered deeds of goodness! Who of us does not each day, in manifold ways, sacrifice these precious moments, these golden hours? ”

“ Neither famine nor disaster ever haunt men who do true justice; but lightheartedly they tend the fields which are all their care. The earth bears them victual in plenty, and on the mountains the oak bears acorns upon the top and bees in the midst. Their woolly sheep are laden with fleeces; their women bear children like their parents. They flourish continually with good things, and do not travel on ships, for the grain-giving earth bears them fruit.
But for those who practise violence and cruel deeds far-seeing Zeus, the son of Cronos, ordains a punishment. ”

“ Pass by the smithy and its crowded lounge in winter time when the cold keeps men from field work, — for then an industrious man can greatly prosper his house — lest bitter winter catch you helpless and poor and you chafe a swollen foot with a shrunk hand. The idle man who waits on empty hope, lacking a livelihood, lays to heart mischief-making; it is not an wholesome hope that accompanies a needy man who lolls at ease while he has no sure livelihood. ”

“ Let me begin by considering the parts of a human life—and by "the parts of a human life" I mean the division of the twenty-four hours of each day in the succession of days that make up the weeks, months, and years of our lives. ”

“ All our work whether we are poets, thinkers, fighters, craftsmen, servants, tradesfolk, teachers, must be only partly in what we do directly. This can to some extent be measured. We can tell how many hours' work we have done in a day; how many books we have written in a life's working-time ”

“ Let us carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious week, the teeming work-days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired historian "of the generations of the heaven and earth, in the days that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." ”

“ The creation of the six days, and the peopling of the earth with nations of mortal men, is the mere preparation and collection together of the raw materials for a great, glorious, and magnificent display of wonders upon the earth. ”

“ And they lived like gods without sorrow of heart, remote and free from toil and grief: miserable age rested not on them; but with legs and arms never failing they made merry with feasting beyond the reach of all evils. When they died, it was as though they were overcome with sleep, and they had all good things; for the fruitful earth unforced bare them fruit abundantly and without stint. ”

“ So, in conclusion, let me say, Let us all remember that while on earth it is a season for work. Here is work—work for the body, work for the mind, and, above all, work to prepare the soul for eternity. ”

“ So of the little that is left of life I may reckon two thirds as dead, for Time that a man may call his own is his Life, and hard work and thinking about it taints even the leisure hours, stains Sunday with workday contemplations—this is Sunday, and the headache I have is part late hours at work the 2 preceding nights and part later hours over a consoling pipe afterw'ds. ”

“ On your head above wear a shaped cap of felt to keep your ears from getting wet, for the dawn is chill when Boreas has once made his onslaught, and at dawn a fruitful mist is spread over the earth from starry heaven upon the fields of blessed men: it is drawn from the ever flowing rivers and is raised high above the earth by windstorm, and sometimes it turns to rain towards evening, and sometimes to wind when Thracian Boreas huddles the thick clouds. ”

“ The first freshness of the year’s work has worn off, “the daily round, the common task” is perhaps beginning to tell on us. Little ruts of expression, little oddities of speech or manner begin to creep upon us unawares. ”

“ But do you at any rate, always remembering my charge, work, high-born Perses, that Hunger may hate you, and venerable Demeter richly crowned may love you and fill your barn with food; for Hunger is altogether a meet comrade for the sluggard. Both gods and men are angry with a man who lives idle, for in nature he is like the stingless drones who waste the labour of the bees, eating without working ”

“ In like manner, if all the employments of life were crowded into the time which it really occupied, perhaps a few weeks, days, or hours, would be sufficient for its accomplishment, so far as the mind was engaged in the performance. ”

“ How often, I have argued, in the leisure hours of life do we find men idling away their time, wasting it in vain talk, or consuming it in the most trifling pursuits, when a most interesting branch of science can be learned by wandering over the green fields, the rocky dell, the mountain side, or by the walk at even-tide, and there to hold converse with the Creator’s works and the records of his will? ”

“ Now we have work to do, for those in time can speak of things beyond, and listen to words which explain what is to come is past already. Yet what meaning can the words convey to those who count the hours still, and rise and work and go to sleep by them? ”

“ Yet, although we feel all these things when looking at this picture of work, it is a picture of work done simply and good-naturedly and as if it were only a part of the daily task, a sort of habit of life. ”

“ I have done all that I came into this world to do. I have worked task work, and have the rest of the day to myself. ”

“ The nineteenth century glorified work. The poet, sitting beneath a shady tree, sang of its glories. The working man was incited to contemplate the beauty of the night's rest that followed on the exhaustion of the day. ”

“ Years have been composed into cycles and olympiads and generations and reigns, and months resolved into decades and weeks, days into hours, and hours into subdivisions which have been again subdivided almost to the confines of thought. ”

“ But whether on week-days or on Sundays, whether in youth or in old age, there are moments, rare though they be, yet for all that the most critical moments of our life, when the old simple questions of humanity return to us in all their intensity, and we ask ourselves, What are we? ”

“ No scheme of work then for schooldays must be so rigorous that it leaves no leisure for 'feast days.' Some days, some hours must come back to memory, bringing not only their past happiness, but ideas for present occupation. ”

“ And when we go into the quiet country, leaving man and his works behind, how actively we find life employed! Covering every inch of the ground with tiny plants, rearing tall trees in the forest, filling the stagnant pools full of eager, restless beings; anywhere, everywhere, life is at work. ”

“ Under the sunset skies;
While their bright tints are glowing
Work, for daylight flies;
Work, till the last beam fadeth,
Fadeth to shine no more ;
Work, while night is darkning,
When man's work is o'er. ”

“ Our eyes, of course, are fixed upon the northern lands, where the Sequence grew from prose to verse, and where derivative or analogous forms of popular poetry developed also. Up to this time, throughout mediaeval life and thought, progress had been somewhat uncrowned with palpable achievement. Yet the first brilliant creations of a master-workman are the fruit of his apprentice years, during which his progress has been as real as when his works begin to make it visible. ”

“ Where men mutually aid in building huts or felling trees, the number of days' work now given by one to another is readily balanced by an equal number of days' work afterward given by the other to him. ”

“ In truth, villagers, workmen, servants, and workers of every class listened with immense attention, without almost moving an eyebrow, to the severe words, too severely commented upon, about the use of time ”

“ Howsoever many they be, howsoever different their complexion, days of summer and days of winter, days of sunshine and days of storm, days of buoyant youth and days of stagnant, stereotyped old age, days of apparent failure and days of apparent prosperity, He is with us in them all. ”

“ With Work for All and All at Work probably from three to six hours would suffice, and leave abundant time for leisure, exercise, study, and avocations.
But what shall we say of work where spiritual values and social distinctions enter? Who shall be Artists and who shall be Servants in the world to come? Or shall we all be artists and all serve? ”

“ Here are workshops of all kinds that look picturesque, especially in the evening with the lights, and to us who are also labourers and workmen, each in his sphere and in the work to which he is called, they speak in their own way, if we only listen to them, for they say: Work while it is day, the night cometh when no man can work. ”

“ This life of ours is made up of beginnings. After the rest of the night we have on each succeeding day to begin again our round of work, and then comes the night again, when our work must be laid aside. ”

“ In itself it appears nothing—the labour is not manifest nor is it the labour—it is the continual attention which it requires. Your life becomes as it were the magazine. One month is no sooner corrected and printed than on comes the other. ”

“ Now as our main occupation took us up from eight till five every day in the City; and as our evening hours, at that time of life, had generally to do with any thing rather than business, it follows, that the only time we could spare for this manufactory of jokes—our supplementary livelihood, that supplied us in every want beyond mere bread and cheese—was exactly that part of the day which (as we have heard of No Man's Land) may be fitly denominated No Man's Time; that is, no time in which a man ought to be up, and awake, in. ”

“ Why, work was the beginning and the end of everything. Reaching back to the beginnings of creation, extending clear until the last soul in heaven had passed on and through the training camp of the last hereafter, it was the thing that counted most. ”

“ In the never idle workshop of nature,
In the eternal movement,
Ye shall find yourselves again! ”

“ What is the serious side of life? It is the season of work. Work! Let not the name terrify you on account of the harshness of its sound: the word is not nearly so forbidding and repulsive as it appears at first sight. ”

“ I write an hour or two every morning, then ride out a hunting upon the downs, eat heartily, talk tender sentiments with Lord B., or draw plans for houses and gardens, open avenues, cut glades, plant firs, contrive water-works, all very fine and beautiful in our own imagination. ”

“ Is it possible to paint more supremely four such different hours and moods of life—dawn, radiant morning,{205} dull twilight, and cold night,—to unite in a higher degree the skill and power of a master? ”

“ While the mass is cooling now, Let the labor yield to leisure, As the bird upon the bough, Loose the travail to the pleasure. When the soft stars awaken, Each task be forsaken! And the vesper-bell lulling the earth into peace, If the master still toil, chimes the workman's release! Homeward from the tasks of day, Through the greenwood's welcome way Wends the wanderer, blithe and cheerly, To the cottage loved so dearly! ”

“ Muses of Pieria who give glory through song, come hither, tell of Zeus your father and chant his praise. Through him mortal men are famed or unfamed, sung or unsung alike, as great Zeus wills. For easily he makes strong, and easily he brings the strong man low; easily he humbles the proud and raises the obscure, and easily he straightens the crooked and blasts the proud,—Zeus who thunders aloft and has his dwelling most high. Attend thou with eye and ear, and make judgements straight with righteousness. And I, Perses, would tell of true things. ”