Sound, Sound The Clarion Comments

Whoever wrote it, it is not a bad motto for life.

As a further comment, I believe that age in the last line has the meaning of lifetime, which it could bear in those days. It makes better sense. To get this sense in Latin, read vita for saecla in the last line.

Yes, Scott did not claim it, but people thought it was one of the things that he wrote without claiming them. He used it as a chapter-heading. I've put it into Latin: Flet lituus, pleno flet nuntia tibia cornu: accipiat, cuicui sensus in orbe datus: PLUS VALET HORA BREVIS CLARAE CELEBERRRIMA VITAE QUAM QUAE LONGA SUO NOMINE SAECLA CARENT.

Don't want to be a party pooper, but this poem wasn't written by SWS. He quoted it in a novel he wrote. It was actually written by Thomas Osbert Mourdant 1700's.