My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
so it stood 90 years on the floor.
It was taller by half than the old man himself,
though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was four o'clock in the morning
of the day that he was born,
and was always his treasure and pride.
It stopped short,
never to go again,
when the old man died.
In watching
its pendulum
sweep to and fro,
many hours had he spent while a boy.
And in childhood and manhood,
the clock seemed to know and to share both his grief and his joy.
For it struck twenty-four
when he
entered the door,
with a blooming and beautiful bride.
But it stopped short,
never to go again, when the old
man died.
Twenty years without slumbering,
tick-tock,
tick-tock,
his life's seconds numbering,
tick-tock, tick-tock.
It stopped short,
never to go again,
when the old man died.
And it kept in its place,
not a frown upon its face,
and its hands never hung by its
feet.
It stopped short,
never to go again, when the old man died.
It rang an alarm in the dead of the night,
an alarm that for years had been done.
And we know that his spirit was plumbing its flight,
that his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time,
with a soft muffled chime,
as we silently stood by his
side.
But it stopped short,
never to go again, when the old man died.