by George Linnæus Banes.
Originally published in Bentley's Miscellany (Richard Bentley) vol.16 #92 (Jul 1844).
There's a mighty old spirit abroad in the air,
And his footsteps are visible everywhere.
He hath been on the mountain, all hoary with years,
And left it bedew'd in an ocean of tears;
He hath clamber'd o'er turret and battlement grey,
And wrapt them in mantles of silent decay;
He hath swept through the forest, and laid at a blow
The stalwart oak, chief of the leafy tribe, low.
In art, as in nature, the vast and sublime,
All speak of the visits of greybeard "Time."
He's a skeleton thing, with a countenance grim,
All toothless his gums, and his eyeballs dim;
A two-edged scythe in his lank, boney hand,
His scutcheon 's a hatchment, and glass ebbing sand;
With tiar of jewels, worm-eaten and black,
And arrows armipotent slung at his back;
He leaps with the lightning, and mounts with the wind,
Destroying and scattering before and behind;
The sun-dial's shadow, and old abbey's chime,
Denote, with a warning, the mission of "Time."
He roameth, unwearied, by night and by day,
A daring old foot-pad, still tracking our way;
He feareth no dungeon, no judicial fate,
But plund'reth alike from the beggar'd and great;
He nestleth with youth in its valley of flowers,
And sporteth with love through the eagle-wing'd hours;
But the bald-pated laird and the tremulous knee
The most he delighteth with ever to be;
While the wounded in heart, and the deepest in crime,
Beg a call from the mighty physician, old "Time."
He mindeth the traffic both early and late,
That lineth the road to eternity's gate,
And passeth none by, shod with earth's clayey mire,
But he taketh the body as toll for his hire.
The grandee may sit in his richly-carved chair,
And the life's blood of insects indignantly wear,—
And the monarch may rule as a god on his throne,
O'er the leasehold of "ashes" he maketh his own;
But the spoiler at last round their strongholds will climb,
And "six feet of earth" be the conquest of "Time."