Listen to what the greatest poet tells you. He sings these healthy words as if heaven itself inspired him: 'The best day in a poor mortal's life is always the first to slip away.' Why do you hesitate? he asks. Why do you hold back? If you don't grab that day, it will escape. And even if you do grab it, it will still fly away. We need to use our time as quickly as time itself moves. We should drink it up like water from a rushing stream that won't flow forever. The poet also mocks our endless daydreaming perfectly when he says 'the first day' — not 'the first age.' Why are you lazy and slow when time races by so fast? Why do you imagine long months and years stretching ahead, as many as your greedy heart wants? He's talking to you about one single day. And it's flying by fast.
See how the greatest of bards cries to you and sings in wholesome verse as though inspired with celestial fire:— "The best of wretched mortals' days is that Which is the first to fly." Why do you hesitate, says he, why do you stand back? unless you seize it it will have fled: and even if you do seize it, it will still fly. Our swiftness in making use of our time ought therefore to vie with the swiftness of time itself, and we ought to drink of it as we should of a fast-running torrent which will not be always running. The poet, too, admirably satirizes our boundless thoughts, when he says, not "the first age," but "the first day." Why are you careless and slow while time is flying so fast, and why do you spread out before yourself a vision of long months and years, as many as your greediness requires? he talks with you about one day, and that a fast-fleeting one.