My Grandmother's Clock

It sits on my mantelpiece
My grandmother's clock
And I should very much like
To ask the clock what it knows
Of my grandmother and her time.

But we all know that it's a mere
Affectation of literature
To ask a clock what it knows
For the face of the clock is eyeless
The hands of the clock do not feel
It tells the hours unknowing
And it speaks, but says nothing but "tick"
And although it stopped when she died
(At a great age, in her own home)
This fact is wholly without
Any metaphysical cause
(There was no-one to wind it up)

So it sits on my mantelpiece
My grandmother's clock
And a hundred years from now
It will sit on someone else's
And its eyeless face will look on
A world I shall never see
And its unfeeling hands will tell
Hours I can never know

And still it says nothing but "tick".