ON ONE WHO LIVED AND DIED WHERE HE WAS BORN
Reading edition
When a night in November Blew forth its bleared airs An infant descended His birth-chamber stairs For the very first time, At the still, midnight chime; All unapprehended His mission, his aim.— Thus, first, one November, An infant descended The stairs.
On a night in November Of weariful cares, A frail aged figure Ascended those stairs For the very last time: All gone his life’s prime, All vanished his vigour, And fine, forceful frame: Thus, last, one November Ascended that figure Upstairs.
On those nights in November— Apart eighty years— The babe and the bent one Who traversed those stairs From the early first time To the last feeble climb— That fresh and that spent one— Were even the same: Yea, who passed in November As infant, as bent one, Those stairs.
Wise child of November! From birth to blanched hairs Descending, ascending, Wealth-wantless, those stairs; Who saw quick in time As a vain pantomime Life’s tending, its ending, The worth of its fame. Wise child of November, Descending, ascending Those stairs!