Old Furniture Thomas Hardy

I know not how it may be with others
   Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,
   But well I know how it is with me
        Continually.

I see the hands of the generations
   That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
   And with its ancient fashioning
        Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
   As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
   As it recedes, though the eye may frame
        Its shape the same.

On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger,
   Moving to set the minutes right
With tentative touches that lift and linger
   In the wont of a moth on a summer night,
        Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing -
   As whilom—just over the strings by the nut,
The tip of a bow receding, advancing
   In airy quivers, as if it would cut
        The plaintive gut.