| |
| WAS it the chime of a tiny bell | |
| That came so sweet to my dreaming ear, | |
| Like the silvery tones of a fairy’s shell | |
| That he winds, on the beach, so mellow and clear, | |
| When the winds and the waves lie together asleep, | 5 |
| And the Moon and the Fairy are watching the deep, | |
| She dispensing her silvery light, | |
| And he his notes as silvery quite, | |
| While the boatman listens and ships his oar, | |
| To catch the music that comes from the shore? | 10 |
| Hark! the notes on my ear that play | |
| Are set to words; as they float, they say, | |
| “Passing away! passing away!” | |
| |
| But no; it was not a fairy’s shell, | |
| Blown on the beach, so mellow and clear; | 15 |
| Nor was it the tongue of a silver bell, | |
| Striking the hour, that filled my ear, | |
| As I lay in my dream; yet was it a chime | |
| That told of the flow of the stream of time. | |
| For a beautiful clock from the ceiling hung, | 20 |
| And a plump little girl, for a pendulum, swung | |
| (As you’ve sometimes seen, in a little ring | |
| That hangs in his cage, a canary-bird swing); | |
| And she held to her bosom a budding bouquet, | |
| And, as she enjoyed it, she seemed to say, | 25 |
| “Passing away! passing away!” | |
| |
| Oh, how bright were the wheels, that told | |
| Of the lapse of time, as they moved round slow; | |
| And the hands, as they swept o’er the dial of gold, | |
| Seemed to point to the girl below. | 30 |
| And lo! she had changed: in a few short hours | |
| Her bouquet had become a garland of flowers, | |
| That she held in her outstretched hands, and flung | |
| This way and that, as she, dancing, swung | |
| In the fulness of grace and of womanly pride, | 35 |
| That told me she soon was to be a bride; | |
| Yet then, when expecting her happiest day, | |
| In the same sweet voice I heard her say, | |
| “Passing away! passing away!” | |
| |
| While I gazed at that fair one’s cheek, a shade | 40 |
| Of thought or care stole softly over, | |
| Like that by a cloud in a summer’s day made, | |
| Looking down on a field of blossoming clover. | |
| The rose yet lay on her cheek, but its flush | |
| Had something lost of its brilliant blush; | 45 |
| And the light in her eye, and the light on the wheels, | |
| That marched so calmly round above her, | |
| Was a little dimmed,—as when evening steals | |
| Upon noon’s hot face. Yet one could n’t but love her, | |
| For she looked like a mother whose first babe lay | 50 |
| Rocked on her breast, as she swung all day; | |
| And she seemed, in the same silver tone, to say, | |
| “Passing away! passing away!” | |
| |
| While yet I looked, what a change there came! | |
| Her eye was quenched, and her cheek was wan; | 55 |
| Stooping and staffed was her withered frame, | |
| Yet just as busily swung she on; | |
| The garland beneath her had fallen to dust; | |
| The wheels above her were eaten with rust: | |
| The hands, that over the dial swept, | 60 |
| Grew crooked and tarnished, but on they kept | |
| And still there came that silver tone | |
| From the shrivelled lips of the toothless crone | |
| (Let me never forget till my dying day | |
| The tone or the burden of her lay), | 65 |
| “Passing away! passing away!” | |
| |
