Time & Perspective Quote by Jupiter Hammon

Idle time, in Hammon's formulation, isn't a neutral pause; it's a moral breach with a paper trail. "Spent wickedly" turns leisure into liability, and the second clause tightens the noose: idleness is "unfaithfulness to our masters". The line hits with the hard clarity of a ledger entry, the kind of sentence designed to be repeated aloud, internalized, and then policed - by the listener and by the community.

Context matters because Hammon was an enslaved Black poet writing in a world where Black interior life was routinely treated as property. The phrasing reads like a piece of Protestant thrift culture: time must be accounted for, the self must be disciplined, work is proof of grace. But in an enslaved society, that ethic doesn't just promise salvation; it offers a precarious strategy for survival. "Our masters" is both literal and theologically slippery: it can mean enslavers, God, or both, and that ambiguity is the point. It allows a religious admonition to double as a social one, aligning spiritual duty with the demands of bondage.

The subtext is uneasy and brilliant: if your hours are already claimed, the only "freedom" left is the management of your own will. Hammon's intent isn't simply to shame laziness; it's to argue for conduct that reads as respectable and safe inside a system eager to punish Black autonomy. The line works because it compresses coercion into virtue - a moral vocabulary that can steady a life, even as it echoes the master's voice.