I know not how it may be with others

   Who sit amid relics of householdry

That date from the days of their mothers’ mothers,

   But well I know how it is with me

      Continually.

I see the hands of the generations

   That owned each shiny familiar thing

In play on its knobs and indentations,

   And with its ancient fashioning

      Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,

   As in a mirror a candle-flame

Shows images of itself, each frailer

   As it recedes, though the eye may frame

      Its shape the same.

On the clock’s dull dial a foggy finger,

   Moving to set the minutes right

With tentative touches that lift and linger

   In the wont of a moth on a summer night,

      Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing—

   As whilom—just over the strings by the nut,

The tip of a bow receding, advancing

   In airy quivers, as if it would cut

      The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder,

   Glowing forth in fits from the dark,

And fading again, as the linten cinder

   Kindles to red at the flinty spark,

      Or goes out stark.

Well, well.  It is best to be up and doing,

   The world has no use for one to-day

Who eyes things thus—no aim pursuing!

   He should not continue in this stay,

      But sink away.