Classic Poem

While cleaning my old six-branched candelabrum
(Which disconnects in four and twenty parts)
I think how other hands its brass have brightened,
And wonder what was happening in their hearts:
I wonder what they mused about — those ghosts —
In what habitual prosy-morning'd places,
Who furbished these reflections, humming softly
With unperplexed or trouble-trodden faces.

While rubbing up the ring by which one lifts it,
I visualise some Queen Anne country squire
Guiding a guest from dining-room to parlour
Where port and filberts wait them by the fire:
Or — in the later cosmos of Miss Austen —
Two spinsters, wavering shadows on a wall,
Conferring volubly about Napoleon
And what was worn at the Assembly Ball.

Then, thought-reverting to the man who made it
With long-apprenticed unpresuming skill,
When earth was yet unwarned of Electricity
And rush-lights gave essential service still,
I meditate upon mankind's advancement
From flint sparks into million-volted glare
That shows us everything except the future —
And leaves us not much wiser than we were.

Dim lights have had their day; wax candles even
Produce a conscious " period atmosphere"
But brass out-twinkles time; my candelabrum
Persists well on towards its three hundredth year,
And has illuminated, one might say,
Much vista'd history, many vanished lives . . .
Meanwhile for me, outside my open window,
The twilight blackbird flutes, and spring arrives.