The Hour-Glass. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

As by my mother's side I stand,
Whose hairs, alas, are few and gray,
I watch the hour-glass shed its sand,
To mark how wears the night away.

Though age must many ills endure,
As time for ever runs away,
This shows her Christian comforts sure,
And leads to heaven's eternal day.

William Lisle Bowles

William Lisle Bowles was an English cleric, poet, and critic who was born on 24th September 1762 and died on 7th April 1850. He is best known for his sonnets, which were highly praised by the Romantic poets. Bowles's work significantly influenced Samuel Taylor Coleridge and William Wordsworth. Besides his poetry, he wrote extensively on literary criticism and editing. Bowles spent much of his clerical career in Wiltshire and Gloucestershire.

William Lisle Bowles

The Air

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

North Wind. (The Winds)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Christmas Hymn. (From The Villager's Verse-Book.)

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

Southampton Castle.[1] - Inscribed To The Marquis Of Lansdowne.

William Lisle Bowles, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Hour-Glass And Bible

Look, Christian, on thy Bible, and that glass
That sheds its sand through minutes, hours, and days,
And years; it speaks not, yet, methinks, it says,
To every human heart: so mortals pass
On to their dark and silent grave! Alas
For man! an exile upon earth he strays,
Weary, and wandering through benighted ways;
To-day in strength, to-morrow like the grass
That withers at his feet! Lift up thy head,
Poor pilgrim, toiling in this vale of tears;
That book declares whose blood for thee was shed,
Who died to give thee life; and though thy years
Pass like a shade, pointing to thy death-bed,
Out of the deep thy cry an angel hears,
And by his guiding hand thy steps to heaven are led!

William Lisle Bowles

The Hour-Glass

That hour-glass which there you see
With water fill'd, sirs, credit me,
The humour was, as I have read,
But lovers' tears incrystalled.
Which, as they drop by drop do pass
From th' upper to the under-glass,
Do in a trickling manner tell,
By many a watery syllable,
That lovers' tears in lifetime shed
Do restless run when they are dead.

Robert Herrick

To An Hour-Glass.

Old-fashioned uncouth measurer of the day,
I love to watch thy filtering burthen pass;
Though some there are that live would bid thee stay;
But these view reasons through a different glass
From him, Time's meter, who addresses thee.
The world has joys which they may deem as such;
The world has wealth to season vanity,
And wealth is theirs to make their vainness much:
But small to do with joys and Fortune's fee
Hath he, Time's chronicler, who welcomes thee.
So jog thou on, through hours of doom'd distress;
So haste thou on the glimpse of hopes to come;
As every sand-grain counts a trouble less,
As every drain'd glass leaves me nearer home.

John Clare

The Widow To Her Hour-Glass.

Come, friend, I'll turn thee up again:
Companion of the lonely hour!
Spring thirty times hath fed with rain
And cloath'd with leaves my humble bower,
Since thou hast stood
In frame of wood,
On Chest or Window by my side:
At every Birth still thou wert near,
Still spoke thine admonitions clear. -
And, when my Husband died,

I've often watch'd thy streaming sand
And seen the growing Mountain rise,
And often found Life's hopes to stand
On props as weak in Wisdom's eyes:
Its conic crown
Still sliding down,
Again heap'd up, then down again;
The sand above more hollow grew,
Like days and years still filt'ring through,
And mingling joy and pain.

While thus I spin and sometimes sing,
(For now and then my heart will glow)
Thou m...

Robert Bloomfield

Sun-Dial, In The Churchyard Of Bremhill

So passes silent o'er the dead thy shade,
Brief Time; and hour by hour, and day by day,
The pleasing pictures of the present fade,
And like a summer vapour steal away!

And have not they, who here forgotten lie
(Say, hoary chronicler of ages past!)
Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye,
Nor thought it fled, how certain, and how fast!

Since thou hast stood, and thus thy vigil kept,
Noting each hour, o'er mouldering stones beneath;
The pastor and his flock alike have slept,
And dust to dust proclaimed the stride of death.

Another race succeeds, and counts the hour,
Careless alike; the hour still seems to smile,
As hope, and youth, and life, were in our power;
So smiling and so perishing the while.

I heard the village bells, with gladso...

William Lisle Bowles

Sand Of The Desert In An Hour-Glass

A handful of red sand, from the hot clime
    Of Arab deserts brought,
Within this glass becomes the spy of Time,
    The minister of Thought.

How many weary centuries has it been
    About those deserts blown!
How many strange vicissitudes has seen,
    How many histories known!

Perhaps the camels of the Ishmaelite
    Trampled and passed it o'er,
When into Egypt from the patriarch's sight
    His favorite son they bore.

Perhaps the feet of Moses, burnt and bare,
    Crushed it beneath their tread;
Or Pharaoh's flashing wheels into the air
    Scattered it as they sped;

Or Mary, with the Christ of Nazareth
    Held close in her caress,
Whose pilgrimage of hope and love and faith
    Illumed the wilderness;

Or ...

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow