Page:Poems Welby.djvu/72

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;