Children picking up our bones



Will never know that these were once



As quick as foxes on the hill;







And that in autumn, when the grapes



Made sharp air sharper by their smell



These had a being, breathing frost;







And least will guess that with our bones



We left much more, left what still is



The look of things, left what we felt







At what we saw. The spring clouds blow



Above the shuttered mansion-house,



Beyond our gate and the windy sky







Cries out a literate despair.



We knew for long the mansion's look



And what we said of it became







A part of what it is ... Children,



Still weaving budded aureoles,



Will speak our speech and never know,







Will say of the mansion that it seems



As if he that lived there left behind



A spirit storming in blank walls,







A dirty house in a gutted world,



A tatter of shadows peaked to white,



Smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.





