Lines 41-49 Summary

Lines 41-44

First there's the children's house of make-believe,
Some shattered dishes underneath a pine,
The playthings in the playhouse of the children.
Weep for what little things could make them glad. 

• In these lines, we learn more about the place in which we are supposed to make ourselves at home. 
• In the shade of a pine tree, kids have left some dishes, as if they had been playing house or having a make-believe tea party.
• Of course the dishes are shattered—after all, they've been neglected for ages. Kids haven't actually played pretend here for a long time. 
• It's hard to say whether there was an actual playhouse here, or if it's just a figment of the speaker's imagination or memory. Regardless, he wants us to imagine that this is a place where children once played, and don't anymore—that's what matters here. 
• Finally, we get another directive. The speaker wants us to weep. We're supposed to cry over the fact that these simple things—dishes, to be exact—were enough to make these kiddos happy. 
• Shmoop's theory is that the speaker wants us to feel a sense of nostalgic sadness at the fact that all it takes for a kid to have fun is a dish and a dose of imagination. That's maybe not so simple for the speaker, who's pretty clearly an old, crusty adult. 
• And the image itself is kind of a bummer. Things are all wrecked here, too. Age and neglect have trashed this play area, and any gladness the kids have felt is long gone. Tissues, anyone?

Lines 45-49

Then for the house that is no more a house,
But only a belilaced cellar hole,
Now slowly closing like a dent in dough.
This was no playhouse but a house in earnest. 

• Remember that "house that is no more a house" from line 5? Well, it appears here again, and the speaker wants us to weep for it, too. 
• Why? Because this house has been reduced to its cellar hole (which echoes line 21's cellar holes), covered over in flowers—lilacs, to be exact. 
• Frost invents a word here, to convey that image. The cellar hole is "belilaced." What do you see in that word? If you had to break it into its parts, some words that jump out are belie, lack, lace. Do these associations change the meaning of these lines for you?
• In any case, you can picture the abandoned home site with flowers growing rampant, without anybody there to trim them back. 
• Not only is it covered in flowers, the ground itself is "closing like a dent in dough." We bet you can see this one in your mind's eye. Imagine you're kneading dough, and you jab your fist into it. The indentation might stay for a moment, but then gradually the dough will come back together and fill it in. In any case, the image reminds of bread, which might very well be made from crops that could have been harvested at this farm. 
• The guide sums the comparison up with this direct statement that this house wasn't just for fun—it was "a house in earnest."
• Serious stuff happened to serious people, here, guys. Seriously.
• And hey, maybe that makes this house's loss even more tragic than the loss of the playhouse. After all, people lived here. This wasn't a work of the imagination. It was a real place, and now it's been lost to time.