AN OLD HOUSE

No one lives in the old house; long ago

The voices of men and women left it lonely.

They shuttered the sightless windows in a row,

Imprisoning empty darkness — darkness only.

Beyond the garden-closes, with sudden thunder

The lumbering troop-train passing clanks and jangles;

And I, a stranger, peer with careless wonder

Into the thickets of the garden tangles.

Yet, as I pass, a transient vision dawns

Ghostly upon my pondering spirit's gloom,

Of grey lavender bushes and weedy lawns

And a solitary cherry-tree in bloom....

No one lives in the old house: year by year

The plaster crumbles on the lonely walls:

The apple falls in the lush grass; the pear,

Pulpy with ripeness, on the pathway falls.

Yet this the garden was, where, on spring nights

Under the cherry-blossom, lovers plighted

Have wondered at the moony billows white,

Dreaming uncountable springs by love delighted;

Whose ears have heard the blackbird's jolly whistle,

The shadowy cries of bats in twilight flitting

Zigzag beneath the eaves; or, on the thistle,

The twitter of autumn birds swinging and sitting;

Whose eyes, on winter evenings, slow returning

Saw on the frosted paths pale lamplight fall

Streaming, or, on the hearth, red embers burning,

And shadows of children playing in the hall.

Where have they gone, lovers of another day?

( No one lives in the old house; long ago

They shuttered the sightless windows....) Where are they,

Whose eyes delighted in this moony snow?

I cannot tell... and little enough they care,

Though April spray the cherry-boughs with light,

And autumn pile her harvest unaware

Under the walls that echoed their delight.

I cannot tell... yet I am as those lovers;

For me, who pass on my predestinate way,

The prodigal blossom billows and recovers

In ghostly gardens a hundred miles away.

Yet, in my heart, a melancholy rapture

Tells me that eyes, which now an iron haste

Hurries to iron days, may here recapture

A vision of ancient loveliness gone to waste.