Indiana State Sentinel

Old Time.

BY GEORGE LINNEUS BANKS, ESQ.

There's a mighty old spirit abroad in the air;
And his footsteps are visible everywhere.
He hath been on the mountain, all hoary with years,
And left it bedewed with an ocean of tears—
He hath clambered o'er turret and battlement grey,
And wrapt them in mantles of silent decay—
He hath swept through the forest, and laid at a blow
The stalwart oak, chief of the leafy tribe, low.
In art, as in nature, the vast and sublime,
All speak of the visits of greybeard Time.

He's a skeleton thing, with a countenance grim;
All toothless his gums, and his eye-balls dim;
A two-edged scythe in his lank, bony hand—
His 'scutcheon 's a hour-glass and ebbing sand,
A scythe of jewels, worm-eaten and black,
And arrows omnipotent strung at his back.
He leaps with the lightning and mounts on the wind,
Destroying and scattering before and behind.
The sun-dial's shadow and old Abbey's chime
Denote, with a warning, the mission of Time.

He roameth, unwearied, by night and by day.
A daring old footpad, still tracking our way.
He feareth no dungeon, no judicial fate,
But plund'reth alike from the beggared and great.
He nestleth with youth in its valley of flowers,
And sporteth with love through the eagle-winged hours;
But the bald-pated laird, and the tremulous knee,
The most he delighteth with ever to be—
While the wounded in heart and the deepest in crime
Beg a call from the mighty physician, old Time.

He mindeth the traffic, both early and late,
That lineth the road to eternity's gate,
And passeth none by shod with earth's clayey mire,
But he taketh the body as toll for his hire.
The grandee may sit in his richly carved chair.
And the life's blood of insects indignantly wear—
And the monarch may rule, as a God, on his throne,
O'er the leasehold of ashes he maketh his own,
But the spoiler at last found their strong hold shall climb.
And six feet of earth be the conquest of Time.

BIRMINGHAM, ENGLAND.