If Still your Orchards Bear

Brother, that breathe the August air / Ten thousand years from now,

And smell-if still your orchards bear / Tart apples on the bough-

The early windfall under the tree, / And see the red fruit shine,

I cannot think your thoughts will be / Much different from mine.

Should at that moment the full moon / Step forth upon the hill,

And memories hard to bear at noon, / By moonlight harder still,

Form in the shadows of the trees,- / Things that you could not spare

And live, or so you thought, yet these

/ All gone, and you still there,

A man no longer what he was, / Nor yet the thing he'd planned,

The chilly apple from the grass / Warmed by your living hand-

I think you will have need of tears;

/ I think they will not flow;

Supposing in ten thousand years / Men ache, as they do now.