TO THE NINETIES.

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.”