| |
| I PUSH on through the shaggy wood, | |
| I round the hill: ’t is here it stood; | |
| And there, beyond the crumbled walls, | |
| The shining Concord slowly crawls, | |
| |
| Yet seems to make a passing stay, | 5 |
| And gently spreads its lilied bay, | |
| Curbed by this green and reedy shore, | |
| Up toward the ancient homestead’s door. | |
| |
| But dumbly sits the shattered house, | |
| And makes no answer: man and mouse | 10 |
| Long since forsook it, and decay | |
| Chokes its deep heart with ashes gray. | |
| |
| On what was once a garden-ground | |
| Dull red-bloomed sorrels now abound; | |
| And boldly whistles the shy quail | 15 |
| Within the vacant pasture’s pale. | |
| |
| Ah, strange and savage, where he shines, | |
| The sun seems staring through those pines | |
| That once the vanished home could bless | |
| With intimate, sweet loneliness. | 20 |
| |
| The ignorant, elastic sod | |
| The feet of them that daily trod | |
| Its roods hath utterly forgot: | |
| The very fireplace knows them not. | |
| |
| For, in the weedy cellar, thick | 25 |
| The ruined chimney’s mass of brick | |
| Lies strown. Wide heaven, with such an ease | |
| Dost thou, too, lose the thought of these? | |
| |
| Yet I, although I know not who | |
| Lived here, in years that voiceless grew | 30 |
| Ere I was born,—and never can,— | |
| Am moved, because I am a man. | |
| |
| O glorious gift of brotherhood! | |
| O sweet elixir in the blood, | |
| That makes us live with those long dead, | 35 |
| Or hope for those that shall be bred | |
| |
| Hereafter! No regret can rob | |
| My heart of this delicious throb; | |
| No thought of fortunes haply wrecked, | |
| Nor pang for nature’s wild neglect. | 40 |
| |
| And, though the hearth be cracked and cold, | |
| Though ruin all the place enfold, | |
| These ashes that have lost their name | |
| Shall warm my life with lasting flame! | |
| |
