Leonora Speyer’s poem responds to the moment in autumn when clocks are set back at 2 a.m., creating an “extra” hour. She first imagines the clocks themselves complaining pedantically—tick-tock, tick-tack—about human hands daring to push time backward. The speaker wonders if time can really be delayed or if the sun and moon will submit to such a change. Then the mood softens. In that added hour of darkness, before birds wake and dawn opens its “inexorable buds of light,” clasped lovers get to keep the extra time. The speaker feels quiet wonder and playful delight, as if this small human adjustment becomes a tender gift. The mood is dreamy and intimate, mixing a comic picture of indignant clocks with the romance of a night briefly lengthened for love.
The "Extra Hour" — Summary
(They put back the clocks at two A. M.) TO-NIGHT, I think each sleepy clock Will lift a pedant's protest to the skies From many a town's high tower: — Tick-tock — tick-tock — Rude hands presume to put us back — Tick-tack — One hour! —
Time will not wait, they say, Nor sun: Yet is this vast thing done? Shall the slow day Submit, the calm moon cower?
O shadowy wings that lean in flight, O night! Before your star-eyed birds are flown. Before the dawn shall flower Its wide, inexorable buds of light.
Clasped lovers shall have known That added hour!