"Upon a dial-stone, Behold the shade of Time, For ever circling on and on In silence more sublime Than if the thunders of the spheres Pealed forth its march to mortal ears!
"It meets us hour by hour, Doles out our little span, Reveals a presence and a power Felt and confessed by man: The drop of moments, day by day, That rocks of ages wears away.
"Woven by a hand unseen Upon that stone, survey A robe of dark sepulchral green, The mantle of decay, The fold of chill oblivion's pall, That falleth with yon shadow's fall!
"Day is the time for toil, Night balms the weary breast, Stars have their vigils, seas awhile Will sink to peaceful rest; But round and round the shadow creeps Of that which slumbers not, nor sleeps!
"Effacing all that's fair, Hushing the voice of mirth Into the silence of despair, Around the lonesome hearth, And training ivy-garlands green O'er the once gay and social scene.
"In beauty fading fast Its silent trace appears, And where--a phantom of the past, Dim in the mist of years-- Gleams Tadmor o'er oblivion's waves, Like wrecks above their ocean-graves.
"Before the ceaseless shade That round the world doth sail Its towers and temples bow the head, The pyramids look pale, The festal halls grow hushed and cold, The everlasting hills wax old!
"Coeval with the sun Its silent course began, And still its phantom-race shall run, Till worlds with age grow wan, Till darkness spread her funeral pall, And one vast shadow circle all!"
To the great natural divisions of time (with their aid, and guided by these hints) the ingenuity of man, under the direction of his wants, has been busy since the world began in adding artificial ones, while his heart has been active in supplying impulses and furnishing devices to that end. Years, and months, and days--the periods marked out by the revolutions of our celestial guides--have been aggregated and divided after methods almost as various as the nations of the earth. Years have been composed into cycles and olympiads and generations and reigns, and months resolved into decades and weeks, days into hours, and hours into subdivisions which have been again subdivided almost to the confines of thought. Yet it is only in these latter ages of the world that a measurement has been attained, at once so minute and so closely harmonizing with the motions and regulated by the revolutions of the dials of the sky, that, had the same machinery existed from the commencement of time,--with the art of printing to preserve its results,--the history of the past might be perused, with its discrepancies reconciled and many of its blanks supplied. And could the world agree upon its uniform adoption now, together with that of a common epoch to reckon from, comparative chronology would be no longer a science applicable to the future; and history, for the time to come (in so far as it is a mere record of facts), would present few problems but such as "he who runs may read."