Pieces People Ask For/The Rajah's Clock
THE RAJAH'S CLOCK.
Rajah Balpoora, Prince of Jullinder,
Reigned in the land where the Five Rivers ran;
A lordly tyrant, with none to hinder
His wildest pleasure or maddest plan.
His hall was beauty, his throne was splendor,
His meat was dainties of every zone;
Nor ever a joy that wealth can render,
His whimsical fancy left unknown.
For afar, in sight of his palace windows,
His realm was gardens on every hand;
And the feet of a hundred thousand Hindoos
Came and went at his least command.
But one thing, worthy his pride to show it,
Among his treasures, eclipsed them all;
'Twas the marvel of sage and the praise of poet,—
The wonderful clock in his palace hall.
Brain and fingers of matchless cunning
Patiently planned the strange machine,—
Framed, and balanced, and set it running,
With a living heart in its wheels unseen.
Behind the dial, the iron pallet
Counted the seconds; and just below
Hung a silver gong, and a brazen mallet
For every hour had a brazen blow;
And near, like windrowed leaves in the weather,
Or battle-wrecks at a charnel door,
Lay mock men's limbs all huddled together
In a shapeless heap on a marble floor.
And when the dial-hands, creeping, pointed
The smallest hour on the disk of day,
Click! from the piecemeal pile, rejointed,
A new-made manikin jumped away.
Nimble-handed, a small, trim figure,
Briskly he stooped where his work begun,
Seized a mallet with nervous vigor,
And loud on the echoing gong struck one.
Clang! and the hammer that made the clamor
Dropped, and lay where it lay before,
And the arms of the holder fell off at the shoulder,
And his head went rolling down to the floor,
And the little man tumbled, and cracked, and crumbled,
Till the human shape that he lately bore,
With a shiver and start all rattled apart,
And vanished—as if to rise no more.
Dead! ere the great bell's musical thunder
In the listening chambers throbbed away,—
No eye discovered the hidden wonder
(That dreaming under the ruins lay),—
Dead as the bones in the prophet's valley,
Waiting with never a stir or sound,
While the pendulum's tick, tick, tick, kept tally,
And the busy wheels of the clock went round,—
Till another hour, to its limit creeping,
Its sign those bodiless limbs shot through,
And a pair of manikins, swift up-leaping,
Loud on the echoing gong struck two.
Clang! clang! and the brazen hammers
Dropped, and lay where they lay before,
And the arms of the holders fell off their shoulders,
And their heads went rolling down to the floor,
And the little men tumbled, and cracked, and crumbled,
And vanished—as if to rise no more.
Still as the shells of the sea-floor, sleeping
Countless fathoms the waves below;
Still as the stones of a city heaping
The path of an earthquake ages ago,
Lay the sundered forms; but steadily swinging,
Beat the slow pendulum,—tick, tick, tick,—
Till lo! at the third hour, suddenly springing,
Rose three men's limbs with a click, click, click.
And, joined together, by magic gifted,
In stature perfect and motion free,
The trio, each with his mallet lifted,
Loud on the echoing gong struck three.
Clang! clang! clang! and the brazen hammers
Dropped, and lay where they lay before,
And the arms of the holders fell off their shoulders,
And their heads went rolling down to the floor,
And the little men tumbled, and cracked, and crumbled,
And vanished—as if to rise no more.
And as many as each hour's figure numbered,
So many men of that small brigade,
Whose members the marble floor encumbered,
Made themselves, and as soon unmade;
Till at noon rose all, and, each one swinging
His brazen sledge by its brazen helve,
Set all the rooms of the palace ringing
As their strokes on the silver gong told twelve.
Rajah Balpoora, Prince of Jullinder,
Died. But the great clock's tireless heart
Beat on; and still, in that hall of splendor,
The twelve little sextons played their part.
And the wise who entered the palace portal
Read in the wonder the lesson plain:—
Every human hour is a thing immortal,
And days but perish to rise again.
From the grave of every life we saddened,
Comes back the clamor of olden wrongs;
And our deeds that other souls have gladdened,
Ring from the past like angel songs.
Theron Brown.