The Grandfather Clock

The old Tudor house was half-timbered and gaunt,

Was gloomy and dim in the hall,

And time had stood still, since my father was born,

In the clock that had stood by the wall.

Its pendulum hung, never making a sound

I’d never so much heard it chime,

But then, on the day that my Dad passed away,

Its tick had begun to keep time.

 

My mother was dead and my father was gone,

The half-timbered house passed to me,

I wandered its passages, sad and distraught,

As lonely as one man could be!

I’d sit in the lounge and I’d read by a lamp

With the rest of the house cloaked in gloom,

And heard the dread tick of that grandfather clock

As it echoed in time through the room!

 

Each tick was a portent, the passing of life,

Each tock brought me nearer to death,

I’d listen for noises, the timber that creaked,

Sit terrified, holding my breath!

The warm summer showers pit-pattered the thatch,

The wind would sough-sough at the eaves,

And summer passed quickly to autumn that year

In a thick golden carpet of leaves.

 

I never once wound up that grandfather clock,

I waited for it to wind down,

But like a tap dripping, it never would stop

I felt I was starting to drown.

I found in the library’s masses of books

An ancient collection of tomes,

And one that was covered in leather, I looked,

And read, and I wished that I’d known!

 

Sir Richard FitzWalter had lived in that house,

And he it was, ordered the clock,

He’d fought against Cromwell for Charlie the First

‘Til Charles lost his head on the block!

He’d fled to the country, was caught in the house,

And hanged on the tree by the gate,

His wife, Lady Mary, had begged for his life

But the Roundheads had jeered: ‘You’re too late!’

 

She left them, went sobbing back into the hall

And she clung to the grandfather clock,

But just as her husband, his heart ceased to beat,

She heard that the ticking had stopped.

That clock never ran for the rest of her life,

But showed just a quarter to four,

The time that Sir Richard was pinioned and hung

At the gate, on the tree by his door.

 

The clock began ticking when Mary had died,

Had taken her grief to the grave,

And each generation it stopped or began

When the master was born, or was saved!

I knew then the clock had been ticking for me

And I wanted it never to stop,

I’d wake in the night and I’d tremble to hear

If my heart was still pounding, or not.

 

Then one winter’s night I was restless, and rose

From my sleep, and walked down to the hall,

A Cavalier soldier stood facing the clock,

Adjusting the pendulum pawl;

Resetting the weights on that grandfather clock

So my heart would continue to beat,

From that time to this, I have lived here content

While Sir Richard returns as I sleep.

 

David Lewis Paget

Reviews

[roarke]

Clocks. Ingenious and insidious at the same time. Usually sounds in stories give existential angst or foreboding to the main character, of Poe-ish flavor. But here you've turned it and the main character strives to hear the ticking continue. I'm not a fan of measured time, unless it's by the seasonal changes. Man tinkers too much I think.

[Jvl narasimharao]

The image of clock for life is wonderful.The tick reminds us of many things.it reminds us of our grand father, father, mother who ceased to live and the impending doom to us. You tell everything like a story with wonderful images.I learn a lot by reading great poems like yours than attempting to write some mediocre poems like mine.

[redthai]

amazing writing

[eatmills]

Well written my friend. I've enjoyed you prose of terror. You've taken a grandfather clock and have turned it into an instrument of terror. Thank goodness for the digital age.

[Seyi Ojenike]

Lovely

[Mark]

I love stories with historical settings. The story of Cromwell and the abolition of the monarchy in England is a great background to this tale.

Well crafted, it kept my attention and I was fully involved with the tale. A man fearing his death so much he seems to forget to live.. or at least that is my take. Then to have the ghost of 'Sir Richard' come to keep him alive was a heart warming ending.

Good work.

[Barbara Walker]

This tells the tale so well, spooky, terror, then, relief. Your words had me standing there in the hall, hearing the tick tock!

[FocusedAmnesia]

Your writing is so good, that I'm annoyed at myself for having rush-read this.

[R J Askew]

Ach, and my clock has just struck eleven p.m. U.K. time .. slightly fast. But then the heat affects the length of the pendulum and it goes faster (or should that be the other way round)

[R J Askew]

Oh the beauties of English history! They beat still. I have a long-case clock which I wind every Sunday. I often wonder what it has lived through and am always conscious that it will still be ticking away when I am not.

Such clocks are so intensely 'not now', not of our age, old fashioned in the perfect way. In some ways they are like rhyming verse which some -- not me -- don't like. Yet they and rhyming verse are still beautiful in their ways and still have a great and pleasing hold over the discerning mind and eye.

Sir Richard wld reaise his cavlaier's hat to you! Your verse ticks along with the steady beat of a well tempered clock. A lovely read, sir.

[Extant]

The things people give for the next to live on, lives for life. I have a very loud clock here, but I've grown used to the tick tock . . . I almost (almost) don't realize it is there anymore, but while reading this the tick-tock grew in my ears. The words float off the page, the computer screen deftly, easily and into the reader's personal life.