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The Strange House

"I hear the piano playing -
   Just as a ghost might play."

"O, but what are you saying?
   There's no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
   Years past it went amiss."
"I heard it, or shouldn't have spoken:
      A strange house, this!

"I catch some undertone here,
From some one out of sight."

"Impossible; we are alone here,
And shall be through the night."

"The parlour-door - what stirred it?"

"No one: no soul's in range."
"But, anyhow, I heard it,
And it seems strange!

"Seek my own room I cannot -
A figure is on the stair!"

"What figure? Nay, I scan not
Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
And that's its shade by the moon."
"Well, all is strange! I am craving
Strength to leave soon."

"Ah, maybe you've some vision
Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they've hinted
It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
Their dreams on its walls?

"They were - I think 'twas told me -
Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
But we - we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
Knew joy, or despair."

-o0o-

A Merrymaking in Question

"I will get a new string for my fiddle,
           And call to the neighbours to come,
And partners shall dance down the middle
           Until the old pewter-wares hum:
           And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!"

From the night came the oddest of answers:
           A hollow wind, like a bassoon,
And headstones all ranged up as dancers,
           And cypresses droning a croon,
           And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune.

-o0o-

On a Fine Morning

Whence comes Solace? - Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
   But in cleaving to the Dream,
   And in gazing at the gleam
   Whereby gray things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
   But as nothing other than
   Part of a benignant plan;
   Proof that earth was made for man.

-o0o-

The Orphaned Old Maid

 I wanted to marry, but father said, "No -
'Tis weakness in women to give themselves so;
If you care for your freedom you'll listen to me,
Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be."

I spake on't again and again: father cried,
"Why - if you go husbanding, where shall I bide?
For never a home's for me elsewhere than here!"
And I yielded; for father had ever been dear.

But now father's gone, and I feel growing old,
And I'm lonely and poor in this house on the wold,
And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere,
And nobody flings me a thought or a care.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-