The Land the Old Ones Keep

SNOW is on the head of him who plows
The steep New England acre green with May;
No quicksilver boy drives home the cows,
It is a man who brings them, old and gray.

The woman tending flowers is November,
The keeper of the house, lonely and old;
This northerly New England is an ember
Burning low and graying towards the cold.

No young voices fill the twelve-roomed house,
No sons put the stones back in the wall;
The only quick things here are mind and mouse.
All seasons are the quiet one, the Fall.

There are more dead than living in these small
Villages below the Northern Lights,
The chimneys smoke but an hour or so in all,
Windows grow dark early all the nights.

It is a sadness that was always so;
Always New England places knew the doom
Of having to see the hosts of children go,
Of having a house to keep with too much room.

This is a cradle for the richer places,
This is the land the old ones keep and tend;
They sweep their rooms, and hope still turns their faces
Towards Spring and children at the south road’s bend.