Robert Bloomfield

The Widow to Her Hour-Glass

Come, friend, I'll turn thee up again:
Companion of the lonely hour!
Spring thirty times hath fed with rain
And cloath'd with leaves my humble bower,
Since thou hast stood
In frame of wood,
On Chest or Window by my side:
At every Birth still thou wert near,
Still spoke thine admonitions clear.--
And, when my Husband died,

I've often watch'd thy streaming sand
And seen the growing Mountain rise,
And often found Life's hopes to stand
On props as weak in Wisdom's eyes:
Its conic crown
Still sliding down,
Again heap'd up, then down again;
The sand above more hollow grew,
Like days and years still filt'ring through,
And mingling joy and pain.

While thus I spin and sometimes sing,
(For now and then my heart will glow)
Thou measur'st Time's expanding wing
By thee the noontide hour I know:
Though silent thou,
Still shalt thou flow,
And jog along thy destin'd way:
But when I glean the sultry fields,
When Earth her yellow Harvest yields,
Thou get'st a Holiday.

Steady as Truth, on either end
Thy daily task performing well,
Thou'rt Meditation's constant friend,
And strik'st the Heart without a Bell:
Come, lovely May!
Thy lengthen'd day
Shall gild once more thy native plain;
Curl inward here, sweet Woodbine flow'r;--
'Companion of the lonely hour,
'I'll turn thee up again.