Ann looked at Amos and Amos at Ann;
They blinked with sheer surprise;
And then they looked at the long-legged man,
Who twinkled back with his eyes.
They said (and their voices were meek and low),
“We ran away from a rhyme, you know.”
“You did?” cried the fellow in green and brown.
“Then it’s unmistakably plain, oho,
That you’re due in Zodiac Town!”
He took up his book and shouldered his staff,
And turned to Amos and Ann.
“Call me J. M.,” he said with a laugh.
“That stands for Journeying Man.
I’ll make you some whistles along the way,
While you are remembering rhymes to say;
For more than once in the land of Time
You will have to speak in rhyme.”
“Our names,” said the children, “are Amos and Ann;
And poetry is rather hard for us,
But we’ll do the best we can.”
Then they went away with the young-faced man,
Joyfully up and down,
Talking in rhyme by hill and lea,
Gayly in rhyme—for that, said he,
Was the tongue of Zodiac Town.
To Zodiac after a while they came—
The twistiest, mistiest town,
With odd little collopy, scallopy streets
Meandering up and down.
The home of the years and the hours was there,
Of the minutes, the months, and the days—
Houses with windows that winked and smiled,
And doors with sociable ways;
And leaves and apples and chestnuts brown
Came pattering down, came clattering down,
And stairways wound to the top of a hill
That a person could climb if he had the will—
That a person could climb, then start at the top,
And bumpeting down and thumpeting down,
Go zip! to the bottom with never a stop.
“Whoopee!” cried Amos—and off and away,
Quick with a kick, like a clown,
He ran to the top of the highest stair,
Ann at his heels—And zip! the pair
Came bumpeting down and thumpeting down.
Then, “Come, you two,” said the Journeying Man,
“We have twelve calls to pay.
We’ll visit the months this time, if we can.
Now listen to me: at every house
Many clocks will be ticking away:
Grandfather clocks and cuckoo clocks
And moon-faced clocks on shelves,
Clocks with alarms and eight-day clocks,
All talking low to themselves;
Little gilt clocks and clocks with chimes,
And all of them keeping different times.
And any minute of any hour
(You never did see their like),
Evening or morning, with never a warning,
One of the lot will strike.
And you may be talking your everyday talk,
But the instant the hour shall chime,
Quick as a flash you must stop, and dash
Right into a rollicking rhyme!”
“What kind of a rhyme?” gasped Amos and Ann.
“What kind of a rhyme, J. M.?”
“Any kind at all,” said the Journeying Man,
As he twinkled his eyes at them.
“But it must begin with the very two sounds,
(Or three or four, if you like,)
The last few sounds that were on your tongue
When the clock began to strike!”