“Time, that aged nurse,
Rocked me to patience.”

Of Marriage and Single Life
Essays (1625)

Source: I Will Fear No Evil (1970), Chapter 14, p. 224

Lilith, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)
Context: I had patience with them for many ages: they tried me very sorely. They did terrible things: they embraced death, and said that eternal life was a fable. I stood amazed at the malice and destructiveness of the things I had made...

Source: War and Peace

[Summer, 2009, Claire, Connors, 5 minutes to a prettier, healthier you: surfer and supermodel Marisa Miller shares some very down-to-earth insider tricks that work for every woman, http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0846/is_91_28/ai_n32169632/, Shape magazine]

"Our Ancestors' Short Lives"
Poems New and Collected (1998), The People on the Bridge (1986)
Context: Few of them made it to thirty.
Old age was the privilege of rocks and trees.
Childhood ended as fast as wolf cubs grow.
One had to hurry, to get on with life
before the sun went down,
before the first snow.

King's Crossing.
Lyrics, From a Basement on the Hill (posthumous, 2004)