Meaning & Analysis
Within a single day, what is elevated and prominent in the morning can become low and hidden by evening, describing a rapid and dramatic change in physical position or visibility.
Insights
Volatility of Fortune
The proverb serves as a stark warning about the volatility of fortune. 'Heights' symbolize success, wealth, and power, while 'depths' represent failure, poverty, and despair. It underscores that high status can be lost with astonishing speed.
Hubris and Humility
It functions as a moral caution against hubris. An individual who is arrogant and proud ('the heights') in the morning may be humbled and brought low ('the depths') by evening, suggesting that pride precedes a fall.
Emotional Fluctuation
The proverb captures the transient nature of human emotions and states of being. A person can experience joy, hope, and elation in the morning, only to be overcome by sorrow and despair by nightfall.
Transience of Life
On a broader scale, it reflects on the fleeting nature of life itself. The 'morning' can be seen as the prime of life, full of promise and achievement, while the 'evening' represents the decline into obscurity, old age, or death.
Renaissance Worldview
The proverb's theme of swift, dramatic reversals of fortune was a powerful motif in Renaissance and Jacobean literature, reflecting a world marked by political instability, sudden plagues, and precarious social hierarchies. The provided quotations from authors like Jonson echo the 'De Casibus' tradition, which chronicles the tragic falls of great men.
Psychology of Instability
By compressing a potential lifetime of change into a single day, the proverb speaks to a deep-seated human anxiety about the precariousness of success and happiness. It psychologically primes the listener to adopt a stance of humility and to be wary of complacency.
Natural Symbolism
The proverb uses the natural and universal cycle of a day—from the light and prominence of morning to the darkness and obscurity of evening—as a powerful metaphor for the unpredictable and often cyclical nature of human fortune.
Rhetorical Devices
Antithesis
The proverb is built on a powerful and balanced contrast between 'morning' and 'evening', and 'heights' and 'depths'. This parallelism creates a memorable, rhythmic, and starkly dramatic effect.
Symbolism
'Morning' and 'heights' serve as potent symbols for success, pride, and beginnings, while 'evening' and 'depths' symbolize failure, despair, and endings.
Temporal Compression
The compression of a significant change in fortune into the span of a single day creates a sense of dramatic urgency and powerfully illustrates the incredible speed at which circumstances can change.
Transcription
Quotations
One in a morning swelleth for pride of his goods, that at the Sunnes setting hath lost all.
For, whom the morning saw so great, and high, Thus low, and little, 'fore the 'euen doth lie.
Au matin les monts, au soir les fonds: So some men quickly fall from high full low.
Cross References
Related Proverbs
Original Scan
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