On Sundays when the church bells ring
Their island-towered summoning
I see the Nineties go
Gravely around the narrow cornered way
As they have gone for many a changing day
Steady and slow.
At twilight before window lights are lit
I see them, whitehaired, backward musing, sit
Beside their narrow pane
And then to me who wander through the streets
The new life with their olden living meets
And they are young again.
And always, by the great hearth’s roaring fire
Or in the spring-lit street, or by the door
I hear their sober speech, with them live o’er
Old days, see the stiff backs that bow
Under the life so hard upon them now;
Yet frugal, busy, gathering up the Past
For memories that serve them to the last
Binding their faggots slow
Of what they know.
If e’er the turbulent world can settle down to live
If e’er we learn to suffer and forgive
To work hard with few pleasures and great faiths
We shall invoke these tottering, smiling wraiths
And we shall smile and whisper softly “true
It was the Old, who knew.”
Note. One year when summer residents returned to Nantucket they were informed that there had been “a great falling off among the nineties” that winter; and it was noted that much vivacity and charm had gone from the island social gatherings.
STRUCTURES.
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....
Yet, all year long the old ideas are walking,
All year long the old ideas are talking,
Talking through our every act and glance,
In spite of all our efforts to be new and useful,
In spite of all our efforts, we go acting
By the rickety old ideas,
The shapeless, bulged ideas,
The mildewed, damp ideas
That have died.