Yet all I've learnt from hours rife
With painful brooding here,
Is, that amid this mortal strife.
The lapse of every year
But takes away a hope from life.
And adds to death a fear. [ Hoffman ]

Gradual sinks the breeze,
Into a perfect calm; that not a breath
I heard to quiver thro' the closing woods,
Or rustling turn the many twinkling leaves,
Of aspen tall. The uncurling floods diffused?
In glassy breadth, seen through delusive lapse
Forgetful of their course. 'Tis silence all.
And pleasing expectation. [ Thomson ]

That which had no force in the beginning can gain no strength from the lapse of time. [ Law Maxim ]

A friendship will be young after the lapse of a century; a passion is old at the end of three months. [ Nigu ]

How absolute and omnipotent is the silence of night! And yet the stillness seems almost audible! From all the measureless depths of air around us comes a half-sound, a half-whisper, as if we could hear the crumbling and falling away of earth and all created things, in the great miracle of nature, decay and reproduction, ever beginning, never ending, - the gradual lapse and running of the sand in the great hour-glass of Time. [ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ]