GRANDFATHER'S CLOCK
(learned orally and from songbooks in the 1940s)
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,
But it weighed not a pennyweight more.
It was bought on the morn of the day that he was born
And was always his pleasure and pride,
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,
But it stopped short, never to go again
When the old man died.
My grandfather said that 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,
But it stopped short, never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,(etc.)
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.
But it stopped short, never to go again,
When the old man died.
Ninety years without slumbering,(etc.)
(from miriam berg's folksong collection)