Classic and Contemporary Poetry
OLD FURNITURE, by THOMAS HARDY Poet Analysis Poet's Biography First Line: I know not how it may be with others Last Line: But sink away. Subject(s): Nostalgia | ||||||||
I KNOW not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers' mothers, But well I know how it is with me Continually. I see the hands of the generations That owned each shiny familiar thing In play on its knobs and indentations, And with its ancient fashioning Still dallying: Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler, As in a mirror a candle-flame Shows images of itself, each frailer As it recedes, though the eye may frame Its shape the same. On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger, Moving to set the minutes right With tentative touches that lift and linger In the wont of a moth on a summer night, Creeps to my sight. On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing - As whilom - just over the strings by the nut, The tip of a bow receding, advancing In airy quivers, as if it would cut The plaintive gut. And I see a face by that box for tinder, Glowing forth in fits from the dark, And fading again, as the linten cinder Kindles to red at the flinty spark, Or goes out stark. Well, well. It is best to be up and doing, The world has no use for one to-day Who eyes things thus - no aim pursuing! He should not continue in this stay, But sink away. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE BELL FROM EUROPE by WELDON KEES THE STONE TABLE by GALWAY KINNELL LETTER TO MAXINE SULLIVAN by HAYDEN CARRUTH HANGING THE BLUE NUNS; FOR WARREN CARRIER by MADELINE DEFREES OF POLITICS, & ART by NORMAN DUBIE MY SISTER LIKED THE POSTCARD OF SNOW by ANSELM HOLLO THE PLAYER PIANO by RANDALL JARRELL AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM' by THOMAS HARDY |
|