The Empty House

See this house, how dark it is

Beneath its vast-boughed trees!

Not one trembling leaflet cries

To that Watcher in the skies—

‘Remove, remove thy searching gaze,

Innocent of heaven’s ways,

Brood not, Moon, so wildly bright,

On secrets hidden from sight.’

‘Secrets,’ sighs the night-wind,

‘Vacancy is all I find;

Every keyhole I have made

Wails a summons, faint and sad,

No voice ever answers me,

Only vacancy.’

‘Once, once … ’ the cricket shrills,

And far and near the quiet fills

With its tiny voice, and then

Hush falls again.

Mute shadows creeping slow

Mark how the hours go.

Every stone is mouldering slow.

And the least winds that blow

Some minutest atom shake,

Some fretting ruin make

In roof and walls. How black it is

Beneath these thick boughed trees!