It begins with Rother, whose running through the woods, in inisling Oxney, and such like, poetically here described is plain enough to any apprehending conceit […]

For time is a fleeting thing, and which appeareth as in a shadow, with the matter ever gliding, alwaies fluent, without ever being stable or permanent[…].

A second period, the graphosphere, runs from 1448 to around 1968: from the Gutenberg Revolution to the rise of TV.

They do their work in the days of peace […] and come to pay their symbol in a war or in a plague.