Old Furniture

I KNOW not how it may be with othersWho sit amid relics of householdryThat date from the days of their mothers’ mothers,But well I know how it is with meContinually.

I see the hands of the generationsThat owned each shiny familiar thingIn play on its knobs and indentations,And with its ancient fashioningStill dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,As in a mirror a candle-flameShows images of itself, each frailerAs it recedes, though the eye may frameIts shape the same.

On the clock’s dull dial a foggy finger,Moving to set the minutes rightWith tentative touches that lift and lingerIn 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, advancingIn airy quivers, as if it would cutThe 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 cinderKindles 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-dayWho eyes things thus—no aim pursuing!He should not continue in this stay,But sink away.