Times go by Turns

There is an appointed time for everything...a time to weep, and a time to laugh; (Ecl. 3, 1). Good and bad alternate in any human life. Some would say that joy and pain balance out over the course of the years. The poet St. Robert Southwell puts it better in his poem, "Times go by Turns" (1561-1595) - that "The saddest birds a season find to sing..." Very often we find that just allowing the passage of some time gives us a better perspective on today's worries or allows God to do us good.  Let's look at the message of the poem:

Times go by Turns by Robert Southwell.

THE lopped tree in time may grow again,
Most naked plants renew both fruit and flower;
The sorest wight may find release of pain,
The driest soil suck in some moist'ning shower;
Times go by turns and chances change by course,
From foul to fair, from better hap to worse.

The sea of Fortune doth not ever flow,
She draws her favours to the lowest ebb;
Her tides hath equal times to come and go,
Her loom doth weave the fine and coarsest web;
No joy so great but runneth to an end,
No hap so hard but may in fine amend.

Not always fall of leaf nor ever spring,
No endless night yet not eternal day;
The saddest birds a season find to sing,
The roughest storm a calm may soon allay:
Thus with succeeding turns God tempereth all,
That man may hope to rise, yet fear to fall.

A chance may win that by mischance was lost;
The net that holds no great, takes little fish;
In some things all, in all things none are crost,
Few all they need, but none have all they wish;
Unmeddled joys here to no man befall:
Who least, hath some; who most, hath never all.