Poetry to go with Ecclesiastes 3

Shakespeare’s All The World’s A Stage / Seven Ages of Man speech from As You Like It - Jaques (Act II, Scene VII, lines 139-166)

Solomon Grundy

Andrew Marvel, To His Coy Mistress – “Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime…. But at my back I always hear Time's winged chariot hurrying near;”

Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

The Weaver by B.M. Franklin

Contrast W. E. Henley’s Invictus – “In the fell clutch of circumstance … I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”

Ps 31:15 - “My times are in your hands”

Ps 33:10-11 – “The LORD foils the plans of the nations; he thwarts the purposes of the peoples. ¹¹ But the plans of the LORD stand firm for ever, the purposes of his heart through all generations.”

Is 45:6b-7 – “I am the LORD, and there is no other. ⁷ I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.”

Ps 131 – “My heart is not proud, O LORD, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me. ² But I have stilled and quietened my soul; like a weaned child with its mother, like a weaned child is my soul within me. ³ O Israel, put your hope in the LORD both now and for evermore.”

Prov 26:1-12