The speaker addresses an ordinary yardstick that once measured out miles of cloth—cloth that, he remembers, was used to cover him. Now he imagines that same tool hopping out at night to a quiet hilltop cemetery, where it goes up and down measuring a clayey grave for him. The poem turns a familiar household object into something quietly uncanny. The speaker feels not exactly terrified, but strangely aware that the same measuring and covering that once meant clothes and daily life will one day mean a grave and burial. The mood is hushed, eerie, and touched with dark whimsy: the yardstick almost seems to have a life of its own, patiently waiting to take his final measurement. It makes the reader feel how death can enter through the most ordinary things.
The Yardstick — Summary
Yardstick that measured out so many miles of cloth, Yardstick that covered me, I wonder do you hop of nights Out to the still hill-cemetery, And up and down go measuring A clayey grave for me?