It is dark as a cave,

Or a vault in the nave

When the iron door

Is closed, and the floor

Of the church relaid

With trowel and spade.

But the parish-clerk

Cares not for the dark

As he winds in the tower

At a regular hour

The rheumatic clock,

Whose dilatory knock

You can hear when praying

At the day’s decaying,

Or at any lone while

From a pew in the aisle.

Up, up from the ground

Around and around

In the turret stair

He clambers, to where

The wheelwork is,

With its tick, click, whizz,

Reposefully measuring

Each day to its end

That mortal men spend

In sorrowing and pleasuring

Nightly thus does he climb

To the trackway of Time.

Him I followed one night

To this place without light,

And, ere I spoke, heard

Him say, word by word,

At the end of his winding,

The darkness unminding:—

“So I wipe out one more,

My Dear, of the sore

Sad days that still be,

Like a drying Dead Sea,

Between you and me!”

Who she was no man knew:

He had long borne him blind

To all womankind;

And was ever one who

Kept his past out of view.