An old fire has burned down to its last faint glow, and the speaker sits alone with it, aware that many others have watched this same hearth sink into darkness over the years. The writing shifts between present and past: the hissing embers, the gold turning to crimson, the cooling iron cracking, and the shadows thickening on the walls. The speaker feels those earlier watchers gathering near, not frightening but grave and familiar, like ancestral presences. The dying fire becomes an image of desire and life itself—once bright, now wasting, soon cold. Yet the shadows stay even after the fire would sink away, and their whispering keeps the speaker company until morning light breaks through the window. The mood is quiet, haunting, and strangely comforting: a meditation on time, memory, and the way the dead remain close in solitary moments.
Old Fires — Summary
The fire burns low Where it has burned ages ago, Sinks and sighs As it has done to a hundred eyes Staring, staring At the last cold smokeless glow.
Here men sat Lonely and watched the golden grate Turn at length black; Heard the cooling iron crack: Shadows, shadows, Watching the shadows come and go.
And still the hiss I hear, the soft fire's sob and kiss, And still it burns And the bright gold to crimson turns, Sinking, sinking, And the fire shadows larger grow.
O dark-cheeked fire, Wasting like spent heart's desire, You that were gold, And now crimson will soon be cold-- Cold, cold, Like moon-shadows on new snow.
Shadows all, They that watched your shadows fall. But now they come Rising around me, grave and dumb.... Shadows, shadows, Come as the fire-shadows go.
And stay, stay, Though all the fire sink cold as clay, Whispering still, Ancestral wise Familiars--till, Staring, staring, Dawn's wild fires through the casement glow.