Theron Brown

“ Waiting with never a stir or sound,
While the pendulum's tick, tick, tick, kept tally,
And the busy wheels of the clock went round,—
Till another hour, to its limit creeping,
Its sign those bodiless limbs shot through,
And a pair of manikins, swift up-leaping,
Loud on the echoing gong struck two.
Clang! clang! and the brazen hammers
Dropped, and lay where they lay before,
And the arms of the holders fell off their shoulders,
And their heads went rolling down to the floor,
And the little men tumbled, and cracked, and crumbled,
And vanished—as if to rise no more. ”

“ As their strokes on the silver gong told twelve.
Rajah Balpoora, Prince of Jullinder,
Died. But the great clock's tireless heart
Beat on; and still, in that hall of splendor,
The twelve little sextons played their part.
And the wise who entered the palace portal
Read in the wonder the lesson plain:—
Every human hour is a thing immortal,
And days but perish to rise again.
From the grave of every life we saddened,
Comes back the clamor of olden wrongs ”