Ah, me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease,
The Present plucks rue for us men!
I come back: that scar unhealing
Was not in the churchyard then.
But, I think, the house is unaltered;
I will go and beg to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
To my life as its bed to a brook.
Unaltered! Alas for the sameness
That makes the change but more!
'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors,
'Tis his tread that chills the floor!
To learn such a simple lesson
Need I go to Paris and Rome,—
That the many make a household,
But only one the home?
'Twas just a womanly presence,
An influence unexprest,—
But a rose she had worn on my grave-sod
Were more than long life with the rest!
'Twas a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle,
'Twas nothing that I can phrase,—
But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,
And put on her looks and ways.
Were it mine, I would close the shutters,
Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
This corpse of a home that is dead.
For it died that autumn morning
When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside
That looks over woodland and corn.
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