The House with Nobody in It

Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie trackI go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minuteAnd look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.

I never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.I know this house isn't haunted, and I wish it were, I do;For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.

This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.It needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;But what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.

If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paidI'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.I'd buy that place and fix it up the way it used to beAnd I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.

Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.But there's nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and loneFor the lack of something within it that it has never known.

But a house that has done what a house should do,a house that has sheltered life,That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and held up his stumbling feet,Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.

So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie trackI never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.