The Owl

All day he sits in his vitreous dome
On the mantel stand of the hotel hall,
And stares at naught like a scornful gnome,
Regardless of me, and thee, and all,
Though many pass him with gleesome feet,
And many whose hearts in agony beat.

Summoning bells on the under floor,
Hurrying steps on the creaking stair,
Sobbing farewells and a mellow roar
Of music and mirth in the evening air,
Burial trains from the floors above,
Shouts of anger and whispers of love,

Succeed and reply like the fateful mell
Of comings and goings and joys and woes
That rave through Life's titanic hotel
To the far Beyond no traveler knows,
Arriving unknown — departed, forgot; —
One leaving a name — another, a blot.

Yet nothing seemeth the owl to care,
A demon cruelly deaf and blind
To every passionate hope and despair
And gladness and grief of humankind,
Who never changes his stony gaze
While daylight glows or the gasbeaks blaze.

A whitefaced clock in a varnished case,
(A corpse a-stare through a coffin slide)
Tolls the knell of the minutes that chase
Each other to death over eventide.
One! two! three! cries the sexton clock,
And the owl awakes at the magian shock.

He flutters down from his mossy bough;
His eyes are awful with weird surmise;
He cleaves the crystal, I know not how,
And rambles forth on a strange emprise,
Silently treading the carpeted floors
Where sentinel boots guard bedroom doors.

From every keyhole a wraith appears
And tells the soul of the sleeper within,
His secretest longings and plots and fears,
His holiest worth and foulest sin.
The grim fowl harkens with eyes of flame.
No marvel! Who would not harken the same?

At morn he returns, a bewildered bird,
And sits all day in staring amaze,
Thinking unwinking of what he has heard
Of the spirit world and its hidden ways,
Musing entranced till the western sun
Leaves him more puzzled than when he begun.

O, the human heart! O, the human soul!
Enigma of being! conundrum of time!
Go guess me my riddle! The centuries toll
Over guesser and guess their contemptuous chime.
I weary of bowing to college and cowl.
The oracles lie. I shall wait for the owl.