Classic Poem

To-night, I think each sleepy clock
Will lift a pedant's protest to the skies
From many a town's high tower:
—Tick-tock—tick-tock—
Rude hands presume to put us back—
Tick-tack—
One hour!—

Time will not wait, they say,
Nor sun:
Yet is this vast thing done?
Shall the slow day
Submit, the calm moon cower?

O shadowy wings that lean in flight,
O night!
Before your star-eyed birds are flown,
Before the dawn shall flower
Its wide, inexorable buds of light,
Clasped lovers shall have known
That added hour!