I looked this up because I wanted more context and it was written around the same time as and compared to Reuben Bright, by Edward Arlington Robinson.

That poem is as follows:

Because he was a butcher and thereby
Did earn an honest living (and did right),
I would not have you think that Reuben Bright
Was any more a brute than you or I;
For when they told him that his wife must die
He stared at them, and shook with grief and fright,
And cried like a great baby half that night,
And made the women cry to see him cry.

And after she was dead, and he had paid
The singers and the sexton and the rest,
He packed a lot of things that she had made
Most mournfully away in an old chest
Of hers, and put some chopped-up cedar boughs
In with them, and tore down the slaughter-house.

But in its first publication, the last line had this typo:

In with them, and tore down to the slaughter-house.

Which changes the meaning so much.