Source identified1
Image design Rose Studio
Read & copy
“I know but too well how time flies along, That we live but few years, and yet fewer are young.”
Meaning & context
The speaker recognizes that both life and youth are brief, then uses that awareness to explain why a relationship should be worth the time and consequences it demands.
Source details
The Lover: A Ballad, represented by the University of Toronto Representative Poetry Online text from Robert Dodsley’s 1748 A Collection of Poems by Several Hands. The line belongs to a lyric speaker weighing desire against the risk of later regret; it is not treated as a verbatim autobiographical confession by Montagu.