Classic Poem

O Time , thou creature strange,
Subtler than air,
Who all things dost pervade,
All things dost change,
And of the whole a record dost preserve,
Thyself unseen the while!
Lo, as from out the depths
Of some far eastern Archipelago
Uprises firm,
By toiling instinct rais'd
Of million million insects unobserv'd,
The fairy structure of some coral-isle, —
So thou, O Time,
From out eternal deeps
A wondrous world hast wrought, —
The fabric slow
Of million million moments unperceiv'd;
For every moment liv'd its tiny life,
Then solitary died,
And dying, left behind
Its fragment of the past;
Till upward, lo,
Emerging from th' abyss an isle appears,
Which, shooting transverse forth,
Is into grots and length'ning avenues
Of mystic cloisters grown.
Halls of the dead!
Halls of the Past and Gone!
Long corridors of years
Mantling the bosom of eternity!
Wherein we wander on at will,
Led by historic muse along,
And wonder at thy matchless skill,
Patient heart, and labour long;
Who o'er the level of th' eternal tide
Hast spread a labyrinth so vast and wide;
And built it up in such a wondrous way,
Working from age to age by night and day.
Nor built alone; out storied every wall
With all that did by day or night befall.
O history sublime!
O matchless Book of Time!
What deeds untold
Upon thy pictur'd page are here enroll'd!
O dim archives of vanish'd nights and days,
What solemn thoughts ye raise
In those who wander your lone aisles along!
A twilight scene
O'ergrown with ivy green,
Where scarce a trembling ray can shoot between,
Fit place for my sad song;
For I would sing
Of ev'ry earthly thing,
How speedily it verges to its close.
How all our hopes and fears,
Our smiles and tears,
Thoughts, words, and deeds,
With all that thence proceeds,
And all that thither flows,
O Time, alas!
Into thy mirror pass,
In a strange ceaseless flux which none may stay;
And there remain,
For glory or for bane,
Irrevocably stamp'd until the Judgment Day!