The Empty House

Out from my window-sill I lean, And see a straight four-storied row Of houses.

Once, long ago, These had their glory: they were built In the fair palmy days before The Civil War when all the seas Saw the white sails of Yankee ships Scurrying home with spice and gold. And many of these houses hung Proud wisps of crêpe upon their doors On hearing that some son had died At Chancellorsville or Fredericksburg, Their offering to the Union side.

But man's forever drifting will Again took hold of him--again The fashionable quarter shifted: soon, Before some plastering had dried, Society packed up, went away. Now, could you see these houses, You would not think they ever had a prime: A grim four-storied serried row Of rooms to let--at any time Tenants are moving in or out. Families drifting down or struggling still To keep their heads up and not drown. A tragic busy pettiness Has settled on them all, But one. And in that one, when I came here, A family lived, but with its trunks packed up, And now that family's gone.

Its shutterless blindless windows let you look inside And see the sunlight chequering the bare floor With patterns from the window-frames All day. Its backyard neatly swept, Contains no crammed ash-barrels and no lines For clothes to flap about on; It does not look by day as if it had Ever a living soul beneath its roof. It seems to mark a gap in the grim line, No house at all, but an unfinished shell.

But when the windows up and down those faces With yellow glimmer of gas, blaze forth; I know it is the only house that lives In all that grim four-storied row. The others are mere shelves, overcrowded layers, Of warring, separate personalities; A jangle and a tangle of emotions, Without a single meaning running through them; But it, the empty house, has mastered all its secrets. Behind its silent swarthy face, Eyelessly proud, It watches, it is master; It sees the other houses still incessantly learning The lesson it remembers, And which it can repeat the last dim syllable of.