When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, <br />And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, <br />And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, <br />My perished people who housed them here come back to me. <br /> <br />They come and seat them around in their mouldy places, <br />Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness, <br />A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces, <br />And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness. <br /> <br />'Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here, <br />A pale late plant of your once strong stock?' I say to them; <br />'A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere, <br />An on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?' <br /> <br />'--O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus: <br />Take of Life what it grants, without question!' they answer me seemingly. <br />'Enjoy, suffer, wait: spread the table here freely like us, <br />And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away beamingly!'<br /><br />Thomas Hardy<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/night-in-the-old-home/
