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.
Other works by Robert W. Service...
