LIFE AND TIME
Time sits in silence, patient at his loom,
And throws untired his shuttles of moon and sun,
And weaves with flying strands of dark and light,
And weaves again for ever, as it wanes,
His pageant of the living hours that die—
Night treading lonely through a land of sleep;
Dawn that has dreams of Night within her eyes;
Day with the bloom of Morning on her cheeks;
Day flushed from labours in the stress of Noon;
And Eve whose eyes are sad with dreams of Day.
And circling in the dazzle and the dark,
In all the ever fading, growing gloom
And glory, swings the clamorous world of men:
Clamour of Peace, who sows her happy fields
Or feasts with all her sons at harvest-home;
Of War, that wields his lightnings like a god
And thunders god-like from his clouds, and swirls
His red rain on the fields that Peace has sown;
Of Joy, who brims his cup and shouts his songs,
Exultant in a bubble-heaven that bursts;
Of Death, who snows his winter where he will,
And walks amid a wailing as of winds;
Of Hope who, blinded by his first sun-rise,
Waits for the slow to-morrow and dies to-day;
Of Love, whose earth and hell and heaven are one;
Of Loss, that whimpers at the heels of Love;
Of Pity, and Hate, of Anguish, and Despair—
Clamour of all the voices of the world
Moan to him like a murmur of his loom,
But heedless whether men may laugh or weep,
And careless ever though they live or die,
Time sits in silence at his spanless web
And throws untired his shuttles of moon and sun
And weaves anew his pageant as it wanes—
Dawn that has dreams of Night within her eyes;
Day with the bloom of Morning on her cheeks;
Day flushed from labours in the stress of Noon;
And Eve whose eyes are dim with dreams of Day;
And Night who loiters saddening still for Dawn.