The Advent of the Everlasting Day
by Anthony Esolen
One of the marks of despair is a loss of the sense that time is going anywhere. Consider Macbeth before his final battle. When he learns of the death of his wife—and rumor has it, as Malcolm says when Macbeth's severed head is displayed before the true men of Scotland, that she has taken her own life "with self and violent hands"—Macbeth seems to resign his soul to the vanity of time:
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death.
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Anthony Esolen is a professor and writer-in-residence at Magdalene College of the Liberal Arts in Warner, New Hampshire. His many books include Sex in the Unreal City: The Demolition of the Western Mind, Life Under Compulsion: Ten Ways to Destroy the Humanity of Your Child, Out of the Ashes: Rebuilding American Culture, and The Hundredfold: Songs for the Lord. He is a regular contributor to Chronicles, Crisis Magazine, The Claremont Review, Inside the Vatican Things, The Catholic Thing, and American Greatness. He has translated Dante's Divine Comedy. He is a Roman Catholic and lives with his wife in New Hampshire. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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