The Two Rivers by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

I

Slowly the hour-hand of the clock moves round; / So slowly that no human eye hath power / To see it move! Slowly in shine or shower / The painted ship above it, homeward bound, / Sails, but seems motionless, as if aground; / Yet both arrive at last; and in his tower / The slumberous watchman wakes and strikes the hour, / A mellow, measured, melancholy sound. / Midnight! the outpost of advancing day! / The frontier town and citadel of night! / The watershed of Time, from which the streams / Of Yesterday and To-morrow take their way, / One to the land of promise and of light, / One to the land of darkness and of dreams!