Press "Enter" to skip to content

The Alarm Clock

From The Topeka State Journal, April 2, 1914. By Thomas Lomax Hunter.

Each night I bravely wind it up
    And set it by my head,
Then say my “Now I lay me down”
    And snugly go to bed.
And in the watches of the night
    I think of it with dread.
So grim and wakeful sitting there
    With minatory ticks,
To sound its dreadful reveille
    At quarter after six.
I wake up wondering what’s the time,
    And strike a match to see,
It looks me coldly in the face
    And answers half past three.
I hear the patter of the hail
    Against the window pane,
Then turn me in my downy couch
    And seek for sleep again.
I think about the bitter cold
    And try to sleep in vain,
And like a felon in his cell,
    Condemned and all forlorn,
I feel it is a death watch set
    To sound my doom at morn.
When, after tossing to and fro,
    And tribulations long,
I fall into a fitful sleep,
    It sounds its baneful gong.
I boil indignant out of bed
    And choke the strident pest,
While passions primitive and fierce
    Possess my angry breast.
Oh, how I’d like to take a club
    And knock it galley-west.

Comments are closed.