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.