Ages amble on for years. Not Advents: four weeks...tops.
An afternoon drags on for days – as Act IIIs do when flops.
An attosecond...? Light takes time to make those
two short hops!*
* An attosecond measures the time light
takes to travel the width
of two hydrogen atoms, about
one quintillionth of a second.
Blips be brief. And as for beats...? But fractions
of a bar.
Some thirty minutes, bells at sea. (In class, bells fifty are.*)
Biennia exhaust two years, then bid you, "Au revoir."
* Back in the day, the length of a
typical high-school Algebra class
in minutes (though feeling
far longer to certain participants).
The time a candle takes to burn runs several
hundred hours.
A century...? Eight hundred thousand
hours -- and more -- devours.
(The first depends on how one
takes account of candlepowers.)
One’s life spins seven decades out
-- in years, that's three score ten
(assuming decades ten years
span): so scrawls the Psalmist's pen.
(A day...? In hours, twenty-four: so strokes Old Smoke’s* Big Ben.)
* A nickname originally bestowed on
London due to its smog.
The
moniker has persisted.
An epoch's length's determin’d by a slew of 'ic'y stuff –
like geometr'ic's, astronom'ic's, phys'ic's... (Had
enough...?)
"Yer era's just yer
ERA,"* opines one baseball buff.
* In baseball, the average number of runs given
up by a
pitcher – his so-called
earned run average – and not a
measure of time at
all.
A Friedman marks the past six
moons; a fortnight, fourteen suns.
A February...? Eight ‘n’ twenty – 'cept in leap year runs.
A time frame's fluid: Al Jarreau took five and raked in tons.
(A femtosecond's far too short: the time buff femtos shuns.)
How long's a generation...? Whom you quiz may well prove
weighty.
Galactic years...? Since time began, far fewer've flown than eighty.*
A gigasecond lasts one second – times
one billion, matey!
(Gestations and Gregori'n years...? Sure…IF you hail from Haiti.)
* About 61 since
the Big Bang, as the time it takes the solar
system to orbit the center of the
Milky Way (which is the length
of a galactic year) measures about
225 million earth years.
A moment lasts a minute and a half. Thus: half a mo
should, as a rule, last merely
five and forty seconds. Go!
Some sev’ral heartbeats– seventy
plus two – each minute fill.
(There may beat more -- or way,
way less -- if one falls gravely ill.)
A hectosecond takes a hundred seconds, more or less.
How many in an hour...? Hey! Just do the math. (Or guess.)
An instant takes no time at all. Indictions...? Fifteen years.
An instant’s just a snapshot of "right now" -- in, say, Algiers.
(A verse which blends ‘em both...? Perhaps
a Limerick of Lear’s.)
A jiffy measures time elaps’d as
light migrates one fermi.
(A fermi fur fans fail to find in tomes on taxidermy.)
A jubilee is fifteen years. (Who so
explains that term? Me!)
What’s ten plus four and
four/tenths minutes long...? The answer’s ke.
A ke’s Chinese, Its sound approximates a Frenchman’s ‘bleu.’
A kilosecond’s three halves of a ke…and so: adieu!
Most Lents last forty days. For folks who’re fasting, they’re a strife time.
For lunar months, slice one half
day off thirty days: ‘tis knife time!
A lustrum lasts five years. When
you’re in jail, that seems a lifetime.
The bachelor (unless confirm’d) lives, for his sins, a wifed time.
A month o’ Sundays...? Thirty weeks. (In
tete-a-tetes, much greater.)
A moment lasts one minute and one
half – not one tick later.
(M times abound. But, in the
meantime, see ya later, 'gator!)
The time twixt lights turn’d green and car horns honk’d...? A New York minute.
The length of night depends on
where on earth good souls begin it.
A billionth of a second...? That’s a
nanosecond...i’n’it...?
Olympiad's years...? Four. That's how long athlete stars must wait
in gala op'ning ceremonies to participate.
Whoever fails to qualify ends up in waiting eight.
Plank Time is assumed to be the shortest length of time.
To physicists who so assume, the Planck's a paradigm.
A period lasts two to seven days -- and doesn't rhyme.
A quarter lasts eleven weeks. (My teachers claim it's ten.)
I'll cut a class to watch Olympics every now and then.
Quadrennia employ four years. (Olympiads again!)
A show should have a lengthy run if writ by Shakespeare, Will.
Kelly closed on op'ning night. Dramatic value...? Nil.
Agatha's The Mousetrap's run...? Who knows...? It's running still.
A Swedberg's not a Sievert nor a Sverdrup...truth to tell.
A Swedberg lasts one hundred femtoseconds. Speed...? Pell-mell.
I gave a lamb's tail two quick shakes. That lamb moved fast as hell.
The time treads at a torpid crawl for cats who'd make a scene.
A Spring semester, forged of weeks, lasts (more or less) fifteen.
At thirteen weeks, a season's shorter: that few contravene.
The score of Cats fills up two acts, with interval between.
(A sider'al year...? You'd best consult your science magazine.)
A Hitchcock take ten minutes takes; a Warhol, thirty-three.
(Review "Long take" on Wikipedia. It's there; you'll see.)
A Tatum? Quicker than a trice...? (Art wouldn't disagree.)
The Upper Pal'olithic...? 50,000 years (or so)
ago that age gets going -- and it goes till...I dunno...
('Twould seem its length depends a lot on depths of Ice Age snow.)
How long a vamp 'til ready lasts depends on sev'ral things:
how fast or slow the song, and when the diva fin'lly sings.
Vacations last the summer long. (The shorter one's the spring's.)
A watch at sea in hours...? Four -- or five or six, sometimes.
A while might take awhile -- days, hours...years in southern climes.
(It often takes me quite awhile to find a word which rhymes.)
An exasecond's longer than our universe's age.
As such, it's theoretical by anybody's gauge.
You disagree...? You own the right to simply turn the page.
Yoctoseconds are the shortest lifetimes ever seen.
To measure yottaseconds. timers need a time machine.
A year's a "lotta seconds." (Was my punning unforeseen...?)
Zeptoseconds…zettasseconds: one's real short; one's long.
Or is it t'other way around: I always get 'em wrong.
It's all lost time...in spans of rhyme...and intervals of song.
