Carol and Cadence :: :: University of Virginia Library

The bell strikes one;
The small hours are begun;
Some slumber, others dream and others wake and weep:
The lagging minutes lapse, each following each like sheep.

The bell strikes two:
The hours the hours ensue:
Out of the sea of dreams, that surges round Life's shore,
The night evokes the loves, the hates of heretofore.

The bell strikes three;
The Past and the To-be
Their bitters only show to the retorted sight;
Their sweets are swallowed up in unremembering night.

The bell strikes four;
Shut, shut, thou dreamland's door!
No Future e'er can pay the sorry Past-time's debt.
Since joy may not be mine, at least let me forget.

The bell strikes five;
The night is all alive
With phantoms of past hopes and shapes of sorrows dead:
I lie and watch them flit and flutter round my head.

The bell strikes six;
Fancy its tale of bricks,
Made without straw, still brings to build my house of dreams:
My thought's a bird that nests upon the torrent-streams.

The bell strikes seven;
The dawn begins to leaven
The dying night's black bread; the birds their matins say;
The roar of London tells the tale of coming day.

The bell strikes eight;
The morning's at the gate:
Unwilling, in the East it shows and rising up,
Bestirs itself to brew the new day's bitter cup.

The bell strikes nine;
Is that the sun ashine?
Like to a candle half-hidden by a giant's fist,
Its eye sleep-drunken blinks and battles with the mist.

The bell strikes ten;
'Tis time to mix with men;
'Tis time to run once more the still-returning round,
To beat and beat in vain against the viewless bound.

It strikes eleven;
The sun is high in heaven;
The full streets hum and roar and thunder like the sea;
“All life,” they say, “is ours; there's nothing left for thee.”

The bell strikes noon;
The morning's gone too soon:
Like all fair things, the best Day hath, the forenoon-tide,
Too late is born and doth too little long abide.

The bell strikes one;
Come out and see the sun.
A wintry blink, forsooth, he hath and yet he's good
To look upon; for light indeed's the spirit's food.

The bell strikes two;
Twain are we, I and you:
Each in the streets of Life his way must fare alone:
None shareth Life and Death; each must abide his own.

The bell strikes three;
What hath Day booted thee?
Since that which thou hast done to morrow will undo,
What skilleth thee to have looked upon the light anew?

The bell strikes four;
The winter day is o'er.
The beasts are wiser far than we are, you and I;
They eat and drink and sleep nor question How or Why.

The bell strikes five;
What profits thee to strive?
Even as the darkness blots the battle of thy day,
So will the tide of Time thy traces wash away.

The bell strikes six;
Life lapses, like the Styx,
And from its sluggish stream, pricked out with points of fire,
The smoke of London soars, as from a funeral pyre.

The bell strikes seven;
The darkling vault of heaven
The lurid lamplight casts back from the nether air;
The clouds are crimson-stained with London's furnace-flare.

The bell strikes eight;
The streets are all in spate;
All hither thither run and and seek to oversee
The Present and the Past and blot the black To-be.

The bell strikes nine;
For Pleasure's poison-wine
The blind folk battling fare along the surging streets;
A raging tide of men on every pavement beats.

The bell strikes ten;
When shall it peace again
Be for the heavy hearts, the sorrowing, suffering souls?
Still in the roaring streets the tidal torrent rolls.

It strikes eleven;
Yonder the Planets Seven
Look longed-for silence down from the dumb vault on high
And in the emptying ways Day's clamours wane and die.

The bell strikes twelve;
Sad world, in dreams go delve
For thy vain hopes, thy quests, thy treasures new and old.
What if, with breaking day, they prove but fairy gold?