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.