The poem opens with an odd apology: the speaker asks forgiveness for the "sins of ancestors," as if guilt were something inherited and passed down like property. From there the scene turns strange and a little eerie. People go by in the field, chatting pleasantly, the kind of folk we see all the time in the street and in our houses. Then the last lines drop the surprise: these familiar figures have "lately come back again / from being hanged and buried."
The effect is a calm, almost conversational tone wrapped around something unsettling. The speaker doesn't seem frightened. The dead return as ordinary neighbors, which suggests the past never really stays buried and that old wrongs keep walking among us. The title, "Living it up," adds dark irony, since the ones enjoying a stroll are those who were executed. The mood is quietly haunted, wry, and uneasy, with guilt sitting underneath the politeness.