_Noon._—Dum tempus habemus, operemur bonum. Life steals away—this hour, oh! man, is lent thee. Patient to work the work of Him who sent thee. _Setting Sun._—Redibo, tu nunquam. Haste, traveller, the sun is sinking now: He shall return again, but never thou. Over the Sun-dial on an old house in Rye: Tempus edax rerum.[10] Underneath it: That solar shadow, As it measures life, it life resembles too. In Brading churchyard, Isle of Wight, on a Sun-dial fixed to what appears originally to have been part of a churchyard cross, is the motto: Hora pars vitæ. Near the porch of Milton church, Berks, is: Our Life’s a flying Shadow; God’s the Pole, Death, the Horizon, where our sun is set; The Index, pointing at him, is our Soul, Which will, through Christ, a Resurrection get. Butler has this couplet: True as the dial to the sun, Although it be not shin’d upon. _Hudibras_, part iii. canto 2. Upon this Dr. Nash notes: “As the dial is invariable, and always open to the sun whenever its rays can show the time of day, though the weather is often cloudy, and obscures its lustre: so true loyalty is always ready to serve its king and country, though it often suffers great afflictions and distresses.” There cannot be a more faithful indicator, according to Barton Booth’s song: True as the needle to the pole, Or as the dial to the sun. After all, the _sun_-dial is but an occasional timekeeper; a defect which the pious Bishop Hall ingeniously illustrates in the following beautiful Meditation “On the Sight of a Dial:” “If the sun did not shine upon this dial, nobody would look at it: in a cloudy day it stands like an useless post, unheeded, unregarded; but, when once those beams break forth, every passenger runs to it, and gazes on it. “O God, while thou hidest thy countenance from me, methinks all thy creatures pass by me with a willing neglect. Indeed, what am I without thee? And if thou have drawn in me some lines and notes of able endowments; yet, if I be not actuated by thy grace, all is, in respect of use, no better than nothing; but when thou renewest the light of thy loving countenance upon me, I find a sensible and happy change of condition: methinks all things look upon me with such cheer and observance, as if they meant to make good that word of thine, _Those that honour me, I will honour:_ now, every line and figure, which it hath pleased thee to work in me, serve for useful and profitable direction. O Lord, all the glory is thine. Give thou me light: I will give others information: both of us shall give thee praise.”