foretime

They are gods, these kings of the foretime, they are spirits who guard our race: Ever I watch and worship--they sit with a marble face.

From Mosaics of Grecian History by Marcius Willson

So he sat and sang, like unto a seer out of the foretime to look upon; Jeremiah, the Ancient, seemed to have risen out of his grave.

From Selections from the Prose Works of Matthew Arnold by William Savage Johnson

Vast was the buried and antique lore that was his, for the foretime Made him master of earlier customs as well as of newer.

From Studies in the Poetry of Italy, I. Roman by Frank Justus Miller

And this is the prophecy, written right bold On a parchment all tattered and yellow and old; So old and so tattered that nobody knows How far into foretime its origin goes.

From The Glugs of Gosh by C. J. (Clarence James) Dennis

It has shown some reasonable basis for the most superstitious aberrations of the foretime.

From The Will to Believe : and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy by William James