'...this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were'

The House with Nobody in it

The House with Nobody in it
by Joyce Kilmer

Photograph courtesy of Dok1 on Flickr
(http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=dok1&w=all)

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
I go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings
I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass
It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store
But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
For the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,
a house that has sheltered life,
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.

...'all the rooks wheeling...'

THE ROOKS AT LEIXLIP

This haunting poem was discovered at Leixlip Castle in Ireland in October of 1977 by Edward James, the principal English collector of surrealist paintings, and a frequent visitor to Leixlip, in the blotter in the Chinese room. It was dedicated to Caroline Blackwood, a cousin of Mr. Guinness and the widow of the American poet Robert Lowell. (http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.britisles.ireland.kid.general/681/mb.ashx)

I would like to be not one rook
but all the rooks wheeling and counter wheeling
in the dusk, a people of black declamations
well over a thousand and forty
that do not stop to be counted
yet in their ballet through this aftermath
at the verge of autumn-perching sleep
never collide in the air at all at all at all.

The chill night warmed with feathers
and embroidered with cawing white stars
rotates until the dawn makes the great, copper,
shining, ancient beech-tree's golden city
shimmer again, while its gigantic cupola of leafage seems
a Byzantium of sempeternal hope
and the dew-young sun in a cloudless dome
of blue comes up - to the music of grass.

Strange Service: Ivor Gurney, WWI poet and musician

 Ivor Gurney (1890-1937) 

After languishing for some years in the backwater of history, Ivor Gurney has emerged as a figure of great importance. Though suffering from bipolar disorder and incarcerated in a mental hospital for years, he wrote beautiful poetry and songs, fulfilling his early belief and that of others that he would one day be famous.
--------

Strange Service

Little did I dream, England, that you bore me
Under the Cotswold Rills beside the water meadows
To do you dreadful service, here, beyond your borders
And your enfolding seas.

I was a dreamer ever, and bound to your dear service
Meditating deep, I thought on your secret beauty,
As through a child's face one may see the clear spirit
Miraculously shining.

Your hills not only hills, but friends of mine and kindly
Your tiny knolls and orchards hidden beside the river
Muddy and strongly flowing, with shy and tiny streamlets safe in its bosom.

Now these are memories only, and your skies and rushy sky-pools
Fragile mirrors easily broken by moving airs;
But deep in my heart for ever goes on your daily being
And uses consecrate.

Think on me too, O Mother, who wrest my soul to serve you
In strange and fearful ways beyond your encircling waters;
None but you can know my heart, its tears and sacrifice,
None, but you, repay. 


Recommended Reading

Stars in a Dark Night: The Letters of Ivor Gurney to the Chapman Family by Anthony Boden