My grandfather's clock was too large for the shelf,
So it stood ninety years on the floor,
It was taller by half than the old man himself
Though it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born,
And was always his treasure and his pride
Chorus:
But it stopped, short-never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering
Tick, tock, tick, tock.
His life seconds numbering,
Tick, tock, tick, tock,
It stopped, short-never to go again,
When the old man died.
In watching its pendulum swing to and fro
Many hours had he spent while a boy;
And in childhood and manhood the clock seemed to know
And to share both his grief and his joy
For it struck twenty-four when he entered at the door,
With a blooming and beautiful bride.
My grandfather said of those he could hire,
Not a servant so faithful he found,
For it wasted no time and had but one desire,
At the close of each week to be wound.
And it kept in its place, not a frown upon its face,
And its hands never hung by its side.
It rang an alarm in the dead of the night
An alarm that for years had been dumb;
And we knew that his spirit was pluming its flight
That his hour of departure had come.
Still the clock kept the time with a soft and muffled chime
As we silently stood by his side.