Time Marches On

You ask me, brothers, why I flinch
Well, I will tell you, inch by inch
Is it not proper cause for fright
That what is day will soon be night?
Evenings I flinch the selfsame way
For what is night will soon be day
At five o'clock it chills my gore
Simply to know it isn't four
How Sunday into Monday melts!
And every month is something else
If summer on the ladder lingers
Autumn tramples upon her fingers
Fleeing before the jostling train
Of Winter, and Spring, and Summer again
Year swallows year and licks its lips
Then down the gullet of next year slips
We chip at Time with clocks and watches
We flee him in love and double scotches;
Even as we scatter in alarm
He marches with us, arm in arm
Though while we sleep, he forward rides
Yet when we wake, he's at our sides
Let men walk straight or let them err
He never leaves them as they were
While ladies draw their stockings on
The ladies they were are up and gone
I pen my lines, I finish, I scan them
I'm not the poet who began them
Each moment Time, the lord of changers
Stuffs our skin with ephemeral strangers
Good heavens, how remote of me
The billion people I used to be!
Flinch with me, brothers, why not flinch
Shirts caught in the eternal winch?
Come, let us flinch till Time stands still;
Although I do not think he will
Hark brothers, to the dismal proof:
The seconds spattering on the roof!