You've locked the doors and snecked the windows tight?

I've locked up as I've locked up every night
Since father crept that last time painfully
Upstairs and left the locking up to me —
Since for the last time father went to bed
To rise no more. To think that he's been dead
Just twenty years — ay, to the very hour!
The clock was striking in the Abbey tower
When he sat up. " Are all the windows fast? "
He whispered, then dropped back and breathed his last.
To think I'd nigh forgotten!
Ay, to-day
Your thoughts have all been turned a different way.

True, lass, and yet it's queer I should forget.

Queer that a bridegroom's thoughts should not be set
On death?
Nay, queer I didn't choose instead
A different day in all the year to wed.

Ay — but you've not forgotten to secure
The doors and windows: so you may feel sure,
While such important things you think of still,
Your mind's not getting over-flighty, Will.
But you must never let a hare-brained wife
Divert you from the habits of a life.
Yet there's just one thing, Will, that puzzles me:
What is it you lock out so carefully —
That you've locked out each night these twenty years,
And your old father with his anxious fears
Locked out before you, and his father too
As likely as not before him? Why should you
Secure yourself against the harmless night?

I never looked upon it in that light —
But it's the custom. ...
What is it that you dread
Will come upon you as you lie in bed
If you should leave a window or a door
Unfastened?
Well, I hardly know, I'm sure.

No bolt or bar has ever locked out death;
So your old father might have spared his breath.
Or is it, rather, something you lock in
Each night lest thieves ...
There's naught for thieves to win —
Though I had left the doors and windows wide
These many years ...
But then you'd no young bride.
And now I wonder if you know aright
Or realise what you lock in to-night?