THE HAUNTED HOUSE.
“I seem like one who treads alone
Some banquet hall deserted,
Whose lights are fled, whose garlands dead,
And all but me departed.” Moore.
See’st thou yon gray, gleaming hall,
Where the deep elm-shadows fall?
Voices that have left the earth
Long ago,
Still are murmuring round its hearth,
Soft and low:
Ever there;—yet one alone
Hath the gift to hear their tone.
Guests come thither, and depart,
Free of step, and light of heart;
Children, with sweet visions bless’d,
In the haunted chambers rest;
One alone unslumbering lies
When the night hath seal’d all eyes,
One quick heart and watchful ear,
Listening for those whispers clear.
See’st thou where the woodbine-flowers
O’er yon low porch hang in showers?
Startling faces of the dead,
Pale, yet sweet,
One lone woman’s entering tread
There still meet!
Some with young, smooth foreheads fair,
Faintly shining through bright hair;
Some with reverend locks of snow—
All, all buried long ago!
All, from under deep sea-waves,
Or the flowers of foreign graves,
Or the old and banner’d aisle,
Where their high tombs gleam the while;
Rising, wandering, floating by,
Suddenly and silently,
Through their earthly home and place,
But amidst another race.
Wherefore, unto one alone,
Are those sounds and visions known?
Wherefore hath that spell of power
Dark and dread,
On her soul, a baleful dower,
Thus been shed?
Oh! in those deep-seeing eyes,
No strange gift of mystery lies!
She is lone where once she moved
Fair, and happy, and beloved!
Sunny smiles were glancing round her,
Tendrils of kind hearts had bound her.
Now those silver chords are broken,
Those bright looks have left no token—
Not one trace on all the earth,
Save her memory of their mirth.
She is lone and lingering now,
Dreams have gather’d o’er her brow,
Midst gay songs and children’s play,
She is dwelling far away,
Seeing what none else may see—
Haunted still her place must be!
[“Mrs Hemans resided in the immediate vicinity of this old house (in the village of Wavertree) for nearly three years’: it (Wavertree Hall) suggested her beautiful poem, ‘Books and Flowers;’ and one of her most exquisite lyrics, ‘The Haunted House,’ describes its local scenery, and gives ‘a brief abstract’ of the sufferings and feelings of one of its inhabitants.”—Recollections of Mrs Hemans, by Mrs Lawrence.
The same subject has been treated by the late lamented Thomas Hood in a poem under a similar title.—Vide Poems, vol. i. p. 48. It is worth referring to, if for nothing else than observing how it has been dealt with by two ingenious and original minds. Mrs Hemans’s lyric was first published.]