“Ah! what is human life?
How, like the dial's tardy-moving shade,
Day after day slides from us unperceiv'd!
The cunning fugitive is swift by stealth;
Too subtle is the movement to be seen;
Yet soon the hour is up—and we are gone.”

—  Edward Young

Busiris (1719), Act V, sc. i.

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English poet 1683–1765

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