Procrastination

Edward Young (1681–1765)

From “Night Thoughts,” Night I.

BE wise to-day; ’t is madness to defer;

Next day the fatal precedent will plead;

Thus on, till wisdom is pushed out of life.

Procrastination is the thief of time;

Year after year it steals, till all are fled,

And to the mercies of a moment leaves

The vast concerns of an eternal scene.

If not so frequent, would not this be strange?

That ’t is so frequent, this is stranger still.

Of man’s miraculous mistakes this bears

The palm, “That all men are about to live,”

Forever on the brink of being born.

All pay themselves the compliment to think

They one day shall not drivel: and their pride

On this reversion takes up ready praise;

At least, their own; their future selves applaud:

How excellent that life they ne’er will lead!

Time lodged in their own hands is folly’s veils;

That lodged in Fate’s, to wisdom they consign;

The thing they can’t but purpose, they postpone:

’T is not in folly not to scorn a fool,

And scarce in human wisdom to do more.

All promise is poor dilatory man,

And that through every stage. When young, indeed,

In full content we sometimes nobly rest,

Unanxious for ourselves, and only wish,

As duteous sons, our fathers were more wise.

At thirty, man suspects himself a fool;

Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;

At fifty, chides his infamous delay,

Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;

In all the magnanimity of thought,

Resolves, and re-resolves; then dies the same.

And why? Because he thinks himself immortal.

All men think all men mortal but themselves;

Themselves, when some alarming shock of fate

Strikes through their wounded hearts the sudden dread;

But their hearts wounded, like the wounded air,

Soon close; where passed the shaft, no trace is found.

As from the wing no scar the sky retains,

The parted wave no furrow from the keel,

So dies in human hearts the thought of death:

Even with the tender tears which Nature sheds

O’er those we love, we drop it in their grave.