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!”
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