He said once, "I will build a Viking ship And pile my life upon it, and some hand May push it off and set it all aflame When I am dead." He said it half in jest. She said in haste, "Don't talk about such things." And he agreed, and they lived on and on Among the books and pictures they had brought Home from their ramblings over half the world. He laughed, but could not stop their growing old. And then he took to looking at his house And fingering the contents of each room -- The tapestries, the tables, and the chairs, The white Apollo with a cobweb now Trailing from fingers that reached out to catch His fleeing Daphne. Then one day he died. The people said, "So tragic now when she Is left alone that her house should catch fire." Some said, "The place was tottering to fall, And all the clumsy things that were inside Were no use now the old man's dead and gone." She only saw the one great chimney sway And like a blackened mast fall, shattered, down. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...CONTRA MORTEM: THE NOTHING II by HAYDEN CARRUTH LETTER TO MAXINE SULLIVAN by HAYDEN CARRUTH CAESAR'S LOST TRANSPORT SHIPS by ROBERT FROST THE IMPORTANCE OF GREEN by JAMES GALVIN TO ABRAHAM LINCOLN by GEORGIA DOUGLAS JOHNSON |