Two Poems on Time

A Motto for a Watch

Swiftly see each Moment flies!

See and learn, be timely wise:

Every moment shortens Day;

Every stroke beats time away.

Thus thy every rising breath                                                            

Wafts thee on to certain Death.

Seize the Moments as they fly,

Know to live and learn to die.

     Another  

Oft we view with careless eye

How the wasting moments fly,

Tho’ each Moment seems to say,

Time is posting swift away.

Just behind the monster Death                                                         

Waits to stop thy shortning Breath;

Think while yet the moments fly,

Dos’t thou live and dos’t thou die.

Text: Timothy Whelan, ed., Nonconformist Women Writers, 1720-1840, 8 vols (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011), vol. 4, p. 142; original MS found in STE 10/2, Angus Library and Archive, Regent's Park College, Oxford. Compare these poems to two poems by Wakeford's distant relation, Marianna Attwater [Head], "At the End of a Pockett Book for Year 1768," and "Wrote in the Beginning of a Pockett Book for 1769."