Poems (Welby)/Time

by Amelia Welby

For works with similar titles, see Time.

TIME.

All hail, thou viewless one, whose lonely wings
 Sweep o'er the earth, unwearied and sublime!
Mysterious agent of the King of kings,
 Whom conquerors obey, and man calls Time!
Compared with thee, even centuries in their might
 Seem but like atoms in the sun's broad ray;
Thou sweep'st them on in thy majestic flight,
 Scattering them from thy plumes like drops of spray
 Cast from the ocean in its scornful play.

Shrined as thou art in my sublimest thought,
 How shall my spirit hail thee? O'er the earth
Thou, with ten thousand worlds that sprang from nought,
 Began'st thy wanderings at creation's birth!
Musing on thee, the expanding spirit, filled
 With thoughts too vast for human eloquence,
Shrinks trembling, like a woman's heart when thrilled
 With love's delicious throes—till thought intense
 Is lost amid its own magnificence.

Thou floatest imperceptible to sight,
 God-like, diffusing life and death around;
Swift stars shoot round thee in thy rapid flight,
 Dropping like gems from midnight's blue profound;
Swept on with thee, through vast immensity,
 Each blazing sphere in its swift course revolves,
The sunny streams go singing to the sea,
 And the blue wave upon the beach dissolves
 Like woman's hopes, and manhood's high resolves.

Even every heart-beat in the bosom's cell
 Steals o'er the spirit like a funeral toll;
Each solemn stroke is like a passing-bell,
 Heard 'mid the hushes of the startled soul.
The waves of feeling, tossing to and fro
 Like ocean-billows restless and sublime,
The crimson life-drops as they ebb and flow,
 And the quick pulse with its unequal chime,
 All beat with muffled strokes the march of Time.

Each year, that seems so long to us, to thee
 Is but one sweep of thy majestic plume,
Bearing pale millions to the eternal sea,
 Through the dim pathway of the midnight tomb;
Thou touch'st the young and beautiful, and lo!
 Gone are the charms thou never canst restore,
The fair and glossy tress turns white as snow,
 And the young voice, that warbles o'er and o'er,
 Drops its low bird-like note, and sings no more.

Yet, in the rosy dawn of childhood's day,
 How swift the joyous moments seem to flee!
They waft themselves like happy thoughts away,
 Or melt like snow-flakes dropping on the sea;
'T is pastime then to laugh away the hours,
 That lightly mingle in thy circling race,
Like dancing-girls, all linked with wreaths of flowers,
 Or like swift ripples, that each other chase,
 Or deepening dimples o'er a laughing face.