Property

 The red-roofed house of dream design
 Looks three ways on the sea;
For fifty years I've made it mine,
 And held it part of me.
The pines I planted in my youth
 Triumpantly are tall . . .
Yet now I know with sorry sooth
 I have to leave it all.

Hard-hewn from out the living rock
 And salty from the tide,
My house has braved the tempest shock
 With hardihood and pride.
Each nook is memoried to me;
 I've loved its every stone,
And cried to it exultantly:
 "My own, my very own!"

Poor fool! To think that I possess.
 I have but cannot hold;
And all that's mine is less and less
 My own as I grow old.
My home shall ring with childish cheers
 When I shall leave it lone;
My house will bide a hundred years
 When I am in the bone.

Alas! No thing can be my own:
 At most a life-long lease
Is all I hold, a little loan
 From Time, that soon will cease.
For now by faint and failing breath
 I feel that I must go . . .
Old House! You've never known a death,--
 Well, now's your hour to know.

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