When first you learn to read a clock
That moment you are in a snare,
Doomed for the rest of life to stand
A victim to that patient hand.
The large round eyes of time begin to stare;
The voice of time,
With tick and tock,
Beats like a heart against your ear.
Now all the clocks form close about,
And in the middle of that ring
You crave to find one passage out
In horror what their time may bring.
And is there no escape outside the circle
Where everything you do is overlooked?
I'd like to stare them through the eyes,
And see beyond that moony dial:
For backward from the axis of a clock,
Like gossamer at first,
Tight-braced strands, and cords becoming chains,
Lead, climb, and spread themselves away in space;
So It, their intimate converging place,
Acquires gigantic intricate communions,
Copious relation to forces beyond forces,
(Cool and placid though it look).
Away and away beyond it, range on range,
In all their tortures elemental courses,
The hidden worlds pursue their time and change;
Are, and then are no more,
Then are again - while we,
Crouched near their ticking dials, faintly guess,
And, as when listening to a far-off ocean,
Hear more, hear less,
Then often not at all,
And visualise the foamy green commotion
Of the great roaring waves that break and fall.
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