Out Of Time

1

I saw Time flowing like a hundred yachts

That fly behind the daylight, foxed with air;

Or piercing, like the quince-bright, bitter slats

Of sun gone thrusting under Harbour's hair.

So Time, the wave, enfolds me in its bed,

Or Time, the bony knife, it runs me through.

"Skulker, take heart," I thought my own heart said.

"The flood, the blade go by - Time flows, not you!"

Vilely, continuously, stupidly,

Time takes me, drills me, drives through bone and vein,

So water bends the seaweeds in the sea,

The tide goes over, but the weeds remain.

Time, you must cry farewell, take up the track,

And leave this lovely moment at your back!

II

Time leaves the lovely moment at his back,

Eager to quench and ripen, kiss or kill;

To-morrow begs him, breathless for his lack,

Or beauty dead entreats him to be still.

His fate pursues him; he must open doors,

Or close them, for that pale and faceless host

Without a flag, whose agony implores

Birth to be flesh, or funeral, to be ghost.

Out of all reckoning, out of dark and light,

Over the edges of dead Nows and Heres,

Blindly and softly, as a mistress might,

He keeps appointments with a million years.

I and the moment laugh, and let him go,

Leaning against his golden undertow.

III

Leaning against the golden undertow,

Backward, I saw the birds begin to climb

with bodies hailstone-clear, and shadows flow,

Fixed in a sweet meniscus, out of Time,

Out of the torrent, like the fainter land

Lensed in a bubble's ghostly camera,

The lighted beach, the sharp and china sand

Glitters and waters and peninsula -

The moment's world it was; and I was part,

Fleshless and ageless, changeless and made free.

"Fool, would you leave this country?" cried my heart,

But I was taken by the suck of sea.

The gulls go down, the body dies and rots,

And Time flows past them like a hundred yachts.

Kenneth Slessor's poem "Out of Time" was written in the context of early 20th century modernist poetry and reflects themes and concerns prevalent during that era. Here are some key points about the context of the poem:

Historical and Literary Context

• Published in 1939 as part of Slessor's collection "Five Bells: XX Poems". 

• Written during the interwar period between World War I and World War II, a time of significant social and cultural change. 

• Reflects modernist sensibilities that were emerging in poetry at the time, questioning traditional notions of time, self, and reality.

Thematic Context

• Explores universal human experiences and concerns about the nature of time, memory, and mortality. 

• Part of Slessor's broader poetic exploration of time as a central theme in his work. 

• Represents a shift in Slessor's poetry from earlier works that focused more on love and regret to confronting the inescapable passage of time. 

Personal Context

• Slessor was a teenager during World War I and later became a war correspondent in World War II, experiences which likely influenced his perspective on time and mortality. 

• The poem's vivid imagery of Sydney Harbour suggests Slessor's personal connection to and observations of this location. 

Stylistic Context

• Employs modernist techniques like fragmented imagery, personification of abstract concepts, and a focus on subjective experience. 

• Uses extended metaphors and vivid sensory imagery characteristic of Slessor's poetic style. 

"Out of Time" thus emerges from a context of modernist poetry, interwar uncertainty, and Slessor's personal reflections on time and place, contributing to its enduring relevance as an exploration of universal human experiences with time and memory.

The poem focusses on the enthralling and destructive aspects of time and is set on Slessor’s beloved Sydney Harbour, using the ever-present water imagery often used in Slessor’s poems to portray themes of death, grief, loss and time.  ‘Out of Time’ is riddled with similes, with ‘Time flowing like a hundred yachts’, and extended metaphors and personifications of time. Time is eventually personified as ‘the bony knife’, a strong image of death. The poem is a statement on the inevitability of death and the human condition, our powerlessness against the persistent grip of time, ‘time takes me, drills me’. Time is introduced as an erratic entity, ‘thrusting under Harbour’s hair’, without morality, as a ‘knife, it runs me through’. It is the force which drives change, yet it remains untouched, as seen in the imagery of the unchanging seaweed a clear link to nature’s immutability, ‘water bends the seaweeds in the sea/The tide goes over, but the weeds remain’. Slessor’s oft used backdrop of Sydney Harbour, which provides an unchanging constant in the poem, unaffected by time and death. The narrator of the poem is aware of his powerlessness against time, “Time flows, not you’, yet still strives to escape its grasp, as ‘beauty dead entreats him to be still’. This leads to the symbolism in the poem of the cycle of life, ‘Birth, to be flesh, or funeral, to be ghost’.

The rhyme that flows into the last stanza of the interwoven trio of sonnets, worlds ‘Now’s and Here’s, he ‘keeps appointments with a million years’ does not give an answer to the inexplicable, but suggests through lyrical, majestic language, that through memory we can temporarily escape time’s clutches. Along with our powerlessness, we cannot fully comprehend time, for time is outside us, a fragile drop of water, “Fixed in sweet meniscus, out of Time’. In the end time will continue, highlighted with the repetition of ‘Time flows past them like a hundred yachts’, which is also the beginning line of the poem; reaffirmed by using a circular structure, the idea of the circle of life.

Analysis of Form and Feature 

Annotate the poem with teacher direction.

Discuss poems imagery and themes.

Complete responding and creating activities.

• Capitalisation – ‘Time’ personifies time  

• Simile – ‘comparing time to ‘yachts’ – speed with the wind in their sails; comparing Time to the disappearing sun;   

• Metaphor – Time  Personification  - 

• Time  Structure – each section has 8 lines then 4 then 2 

•  Direct speech – inverted commas – punctuation – constructed defensive conversations, internal monologues  

• Accumulation of adverbs – first line of four line stanza in section 1; third line of four line stanza in section 2.  

• Verb choices – accumulation – ‘takes…drills…drives’

•   Repetition – simile of ‘Time’ and ‘yachts’ at the beginning and ending of the poem 

1. Identify the simile in the opening line and suggest what the poet is inferring about time and its impact on our ability to engage in human experiences? 

2. The pace of the opening four lines echoes the notion that ‘Time’ in its personified form, has power over the life experiences we have. To what extent do the remaining four lines present contrasts of how time impacts on human experience? 

3. In what way does the accumulation of adverbs in the first line of the quatrain in the first section infer the speaker is not enjoying his experience of the world?  

4. The speaker addresses ‘Time’ directly. Why does he exhort time to ‘leave’ the ‘moment’? 

5. What is the effectiveness of beginning the second section with the final line of the last section? To what extent does Slessor use this structural feature to reinforce his message of ‘Time’ and its impact on human experience? 

6. Contrasts are presented in the second line of the second section. Identify these contrasts and suggest how they add pace to the poem. To what extent does the pace overall expose how time affects human experience? 

7. Quintessential human experiences are referred to in the final line of the octet in section 2. Why does Slessor suggest ‘Time’ is a ‘ghost’ here?

 8. Human experience has existed for millennia. To what extent does the reference to ‘a million years’ imply human experience is limited by ‘Time’? 

9. The speaker allows ‘Time’ to take him on an experience in the final couplet of the second section. What is Slessor suggesting about the responsibility we should take for controlling our own human experiences? 

10. The pace of the final section slows, the assonance of the long vowel sounds allows ‘Time’ to slow. What is Slessor suggesting about human experience as we age? 

11. Slessor uses the term ‘meniscus’ in the final octet. It refers to a lens, concave on one side and convex on the other. The individual sits within this lens. What is Slessor’s motivation for constructing such an image? 

12. The final quatrain seems to acknowledge the speaker’s sense of empowerment. Why has he used a rhetorical question here? To what extent has the experience of the water and wind, as metaphors of human experience, become a force for change?

 13. The final line of the quatrain infers the speaker has not been able to control ‘Time’ and as such, has succumbed to its power to control his world. What is the metaphor  implied by the verb ‘taken’? 

14. The final couplet suggests all human experience ends. Natural order and ‘Time’ have all power over human experience. Do you agree or disagree? 15. To what extent does this poem reinforce the value of human experience?   

Sample paragraph: 

Slessor’s poem, one of his Sydney Harbour poems, presents the imperative of noticing every aspect of the human experience with which we are privileged. The poem demonstrates how we can be ‘foxed’ or tricked by ‘Time’, and as such, waste moments that lead to our being able to change our perspective or notice the detail of our potential. The accumulation of adverbs in the opening section ‘Vilely….stupidly’ forces us to recognise that if we are not taking note of ‘Time’ we may become a victim to its forces. The poet suggests that ‘Time’, personified through the capitalisation, has the capacity to ‘kiss or kill’.  We are therefore, bound between ‘Birth’ and death, quintessential elements of human experience and are driven and controlled by our capacity to live a life between those points of existence. The poet suggests it is only when we take the moment to slow ‘Time’, by noticing every detail of the world around us that we can fully embrace human experience. The ‘camera’ that records life, can record moments of experience taking us back later to thoughts such as the rhetorical question Slessor poses in his final four line stanza. The paradox here is that in the moment of thought, ‘Time’ has already moved on and we, like the ‘yachts’ in Slessor’s simile, are travelling in a metaphorical whirlwind that we can never control.

Creating

Create a visual text which showcases their understanding of ‘Out of Time’. 

Use visual language features to portray ideas and images explored in the text.