Four Points - Ancestry of My Children - On Moving to a New House

On Moving to a New House

C.G. Warner

On Moving to a New Home
With apologies to W. Shakespeare

To pack, or not to pack: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to pack and cart
The piles of stuff of conspicuous consumption,
Or to take arms against a sea of junk,
And by dumping end them? To discard: to dump,
To dump no more; and by a dump to say I end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural choices
That moving is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To discard, to dump;
To dump: perchance to want: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sea of stuff who knows what one will need
When we have shuffled off to our new home,
Must give us pause: - There's the respect
That marks the well worn chair of her long life;
For who would bear the loving memories of time,
The crooked bookcase, the proud husband's gift,
The stained rug upon which our children played,
The insolence of table that held the old TV
The patient merit of the grandchildren's toys,
When he himself might his quietus make
With old mortgage? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under piles of boxes,
But that the dread of something needed after discard
To well stocked dump, from whose bourn
No discarded item returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those things we have
Than fly to discard that we know not of?
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And choices of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of dumped.

The first definition of "Quietus" in Websters is final settlement as of a debt thus settlement of the old mortgage.

The first definition of "Fardels" in Websters is a bundle and the second, archaic, is burden .