A House with a History
















There is a house in a city street
   Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
      And their babblings beat
   From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
   Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
      Who read not how
   Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
   Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
      Of human ways
   Before these filled the place.

To them that house's tale is theirs,
   No former voices call
Aloud therein.  Its aspect bears
      Their joys and cares
   Alone, from wall to wall.

Just the Same




















I sat.  It all was past;
Hope never would hail again;
Fair days had ceased at a blast,
The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,
And the halo in which I had hied
So gaily gallantly on
Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,
In a cloud too black for name:
- People frisked hither and thither;
The world was just the same.

Growth in May
















I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
   And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
   And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
   That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
   And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

NEAR CHARD.