Old Furniture

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.