MY TIMEPIECE.

IT stands upon a little shelf,

And watches everything I do,

And winks and blinks till I am through,

Then says, like some bewitching elf, -

"You 're through, you're through!"

If, impatiently I bide the time,

And find some cause to fume and fret

That expectations linger yet,

It lazily repeats the rhyme, -

"Not yet, not yet!" -

And when I am in haste, you know,

And carelessly miscalculate,

It ticks with pace accelerate,

And then it mocks me as I go, -

"Too late, too late!"

And when my creditors appear,

And threaten savagely to sue,

And say the time is overdue,

An echo from the shelf I hear, -

"Too true, too true!"

And so it prates with mimic awe

At all I do; and if to-day

I name a goal, it seems to say, -

As if rehearsing some old saw, -

"Jamais, Jamais!"