She has known Time like the cock of red dawn and Time like a tired clock slowing; She has seen so many faces and bodies, young and then old, so much life, so many patterns of death and birth. She knows that she must leave them soon. She is not afraid to flow with that river’s flowing. But the wrinkled earth still hangs at her sufficed breast like a weary child, she is unwilling to go while she still has milk for the earth.

She will go in her sleep, most likely, she has the sunk death-sleep of the old already, (War-bugles by the Potomac, you cannot reach her ears with your brass lyric, piercing the crowded dark.) It does not matter, the farm will go on, the farm and the children bury her in her best dress, the plow cut its furrow, steady, (War-horses of the Shenandoah, why should you hurry so fast to tramp the last ashy fire from so feeble and retired a spark?)