The Clock-Winder

It is dark as a cave,     Or a vault in the nave     When the iron door     Is closed, and the floor     Of the church relaid     With trowel and spade.     But the parish-clerk     Cares not for the dark     As he winds in the tower     At a regular hour     The rheumatic clock,     Whose dilatory knock     You can hear when praying     At the day's decaying,     Or at any lone while     From a pew in the aisle.     Up, up from the ground     Around and around     In the turret stair     He clambers, to where     The wheelwork is,     With its tick, click, whizz,     Reposefully measuring     Each day to its end     That mortal men spend     In sorrowing and pleasuring     Nightly thus does he climb     To the trackway of Time.     Him I followed one night     To this place without light,     And, ere I spoke, heard     Him say, word by word,     At the end of his winding,     The darkness unminding:-     "So I wipe out one more,     My Dear, of the sore     Sad days that still be,     Like a drying Dead Sea,     Between you and me!"     Who she was no man knew:     He had long borne him blind     To all womankind;     And was ever one who     Kept his past out of view.