Explore "Structures" by Edwina Stanton Babcock on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
They have taken the old houses, / Lovingly they have taken them; / Bound up their wounds, bandaged their aching sides, / Made them soft friendships of pretty paint / And kindnesses of mortar.... / They've made little paths this way / And little paths that way / And cosseted and crooned and coaxed and cared, / Till the old houses, the very old houses, / Stand up quite proudly with a dear and ancient pride. / All day long -- all day long they meditate, / In spite of all the pretty paints; / In spite of all their mended ceilings, do they meditate / On the old houses, the very old houses / That they were when they died.
And so I suppose with the old ideas, / Rickety old ideas, / Heart-broken shapes that stand in field and sky; / Cleverly we re-paint them, / Cleverly decorate and give them quite new hinges, / And open them up and brick them in and hold them, / All that is good in them, away from ruin....