Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

(Calmly We Walk Through This April's Day)

Time is the school in which we learn.

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

Time is the fire in which we burn.

Calmly We Walk Through This April Day

Calmly we walk through this April's day,
Metropolitan poetry here and there,
In the park sit pauper and rentier,
The screaming children, the motor-car
Fugitive about us, running away,
Between the worker and the millionaire
Number provides all distances,
It is Nineteen Thirty-Seven now,
Many great dears are taken away,
What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(...that time is the fire in which we burn.)

(This is the school in which we learn...)
What is the self amid this blaze?
What am I now that I was then
Which I shall suffer and act again,
The theodicy I wrote in my high school days
Restored all life from infancy,
The children shouting are bright as they run
(This is the school in which they learn . . .)
Ravished entirely in their passing play!
(...that time is the fire in which they burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?
From Nineteen-Fourteen to the present day,
Bert Spira and Rhoda consume, consume
Not where they are now (where are they now?)
But what they were then, both beautiful;

Each minute bursts in the burning room,
The great globe reels in the solar fire,
Spinning the trivial and unique away.
(How all things flash! How all things flare!)
What am I now that I was then?
May memory restore again and again
The smallest color of the smallest day:
Time is the school in which we learn,
Time is the fire in which we burn.

What will become of you and me
(This is the school in which we learn ...)
Besides the photo and the memory?
(... that time is the fire in which we burn.)

Avid its rush, that reeling blaze!
Where is my father and Eleanor?
Not where are they now, dead seven years,
But what they were then?
No more? No more?

time is an excellent teacher - unfortunately it kills all its pupils

Eduquer, c'est allumer un feu

Time is the element in which we exist... We are either borne along by it or drowned in it.

We must also learn that time itself is indivisible, that every act is a blending of past experience, present situation and future expectancy.

"Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its students."

[<i>Letter, November 1856</i>]

Time, as it grows old, teaches all things.

Teaching Fire a Lesson

Fire is hot. That's what it does. If you get burned by fire, you can be annoyed at yourself, but being angry at fire doesn't do you much good. And trying to teach the fire a lesson so it won't be hot next time is certainly not time well spent.

Our inclination is to give fire a pass, because it's not human. But human beings are similar, in that they're not going to change any time soon either.

Time in its aging course teaches all things.