Ha, ha! keep time: how sour sweet music is, When time is broke and no proportion kept!So is it in the music of men's lives.And here have I the daintiness of earTo cheque time broke in a disorder'd string;But for the concord of my state and timeHad not an ear to hear my true time broke.I wasted time, and now doth time waste me;For now hath time made me his numbering clock:My thoughts are minutes; and with sighs they jarTheir watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch,Whereto my finger, like a dial's point,Is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears.http://www.online-literature.com/shakespeare/richardII/19/

Summary

In this quote from Shakespeare's play Richard II, the speaker laments the consequences of wasting time. He humorously observes that when time is not kept, music loses its sweetness, just as the harmony and rhythm of one's life are disrupted. The speaker claims to possess an acute sense of time but realizes that his own lack of order and wasted time have now become the cause of his downfall. Time, personified as a counting clock, has made the speaker its victim, reducing his thoughts to mere minutes and causing him to constantly watch time passing, cleansing his eyes from tears caused by the wastefulness of past actions.

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