To His Watch, When He Could Not Sleep
Uncessant Minutes, whil’st you move you tell
The time that tells our life, which though it run
Never so fast or farr, you’r new begun
Short steps shall overtake; for though life well
May scape his own Account, it shall not yours,
You are Death’s Auditors, that both divide
And summ what ere that life inspir’d endures
Past a beginning, and through you we bide
The doom of Fate, whose unrecall’d Decree
You date, bring, execute; making what’s new
Ill and good, old, for as we die in you,
You die in Time, Time in Eternity.
Source: Poets of the English Language (Viking Press, 1950)