The poem
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.