Popular Posts

Labels

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

Night in the Old Home-Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)


Night in the Old Home
When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,
And Life’s bare pathway looms like a desert track to
me,
And from hall and parlour the living have gone to
                their rest,
The perished people who housed them here come back
                to me.

They come and seat them around in their mouldy
                places,
Now and then bending towards me a glance of wist-
                fullness
A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces,
And in the bearing of each a passive trustfulness.

“Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here,
A pale late plant of your once strong stock?” I say to
                them;
“A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere,
And on That which consigns men to night after show-
                ing the day to them?”

“—O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not
                thus:
Take of Life what it grants, without question!” they
                answer me seemingly.
“Enjoy, suffer wait: spread the table here freely like
                us,
And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away
                beamingly!”

No comments:

Post a Comment