Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 29-32
Make yourself up a cheering song of how
Someone's road home from work this once was,
Who may be just ahead of you on foot
Or creaking with a buggy load of grain.
- Here are more marching orders from our guide, telling us how to cheer ourselves after all this bleak, creepy stuff about being watched in abandoned orchards. He tells us to invent a song about when this road was a road, and the house, a house.
- Chances are, in ye olden times, someone used to travel this road every day on their way home from work.
- We might find a sense of solace or comfort in the idea that this very same person is ahead of us on the road, just out of sight.
- Maybe they're walking, maybe they're riding a buggy filled with harvested grain.
- Sure, Shmoopers, we may be the only figure on this path now, but it didn't used to be so. And the thought of folks traveling this road, going about their daily business, should cheer us up a bit, right?
Lines 33-35
The height of the adventure is the height
Of country where two village cultures faded
Into each other. Both of them are lost.
- The adventure continues. It's worth noting that this is actually the first time our speaker has referred to this journey as an "adventure," which continues the positive tone of the previous lines.
- And not only is this suddenly an adventure—we're also at the height of it. That height comes at the height of the country, too.
- It sounds like we've climbed a big hill here.
- The top of that hill is the place where "two village cultures faded into each other." This line's a bit hard to grasp, but try Shmoop's theory on for size: we think he's talking about two villages, separated by a hill, which was pretty common the the wayback days, when villages would typically be located in a valley, near a stream or river. The hill marks the divide between the two villages, where their cultures would bleed into each other.
- Of course, none of that matters now, because the villages are gone—leaving behind nothing but cellar holes and ruined orchards. Remember: the town is no more a town (7).