fate
In one of his poems, George Chapman, Shakespeare’s contemporary, compares time to a pollinating honeybee and the world to a flower garden, declaring strangely that “time’s golden thigh upholds the flowery body of the earth.” He explains that when we use time correctly it brings harmony and legitimacy to life. The verse ends with an aphorism: “The use of time is fate.” The phrase is inscribed on my workroom door. It’s in front of me now, in the flickering sunlight glancing off the river. The Use of Time Is Fate.
The Lost Carving: A Journey to the Heart of Making (New York: Viking, 2012), 53.