Explore "Night in the Old Home" by Thomas Hardy on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
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, / My 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 wistfulness, / A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces, / And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness.
"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 showing 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! "