As is known, time has been an important subject of philosophy since antiquity. Metaphor and poetry –in which metaphors are considered essential– have also engaged the attention of philosophers all through the ages. Some have used metaphors as a means of expression, while others have considered them directly as an object of research, and inquiries into the nature of poetry have played a significant role in the emergence of the philosophy of aesthetics. This article approaches time, metaphor, and poetry from the perspectives of philology and literary criticism rather than philosophy with the hope that it will contribute to other multidisciplinary or directly philosophical studies as almost every step in it concerns philosophy in one way or another. That the tension between literature and philosophy, united by the aim of understanding the world and human nature and separated by their form of truth-seeking, has been fruitful in many ways and that new approaches and areas of knowledge such as cognitive aesthetics have added dimensions to this relationship are self-evident. This study analyzes certain loci classici that involve metaphors based on the subjective perception of time in Latin poetry, mainly from the Augustan period (27 BCE–14 CE) within the framework of conceptual metaphor theory and provides a general discussion of this framework’s potential for a critical analysis of Latin poetry from various angles. Based on a selection of examples from Catullus, Horace, Ovid, Tibullus, Statius, and Phaedrus, the findings from the study support the view that both cognitive processes and narrative techniques are involved in the emergence and perception of metaphors in poetry and indicate that Latin poetry can be interpreted more efficiently from this double perspective. Although the examples were selected from subjective metaphors about time (i.e., metaphors in which the individual perception of the poet or narrator comes to the fore), it has been observed that the cultural and subjective images