The Haunted House

This must be the very night!The moon knows it!--and the trees!They stand straight upright,Each a sentinel drawn up,As if they dared not knowWhich way the wind might blow!The very pool, with dead gray eye,Dully expectant, feels it nigh,And begins to curdle and freeze!And the dark night,With its fringe of light,Holds the secret in its cup!

II. What can it be, to makeThe poplars cease to shiver and shake,And up in the dismal airStand straight and stiff as the human hairWhen the human soul is dizzy with dread--All but those two that strainAside in a frenzy of speechless pain,Though never a wind sends out a breathTo tunnel the foggy rheum of death?What can it be has power to scareThe full-grown moon to the idiot stareOf a blasted eye in the midnight air?Something has gone wrong;A scream will come tearing out ere long!

III. Still as death,Although I listen with bated breath!Yet something is coming, I know--is coming!With an inward soundless hummingSomewhere in me, or if in the airI cannot tell, but it is there!Marching on to an unheard drummingSomething is coming--coming--Growing and coming!And the moon is aware,Aghast in the airAt the thing that is only comingWith an inward soundless hummingAnd an unheard spectral drumming!

IV. Nothing to see and nothing to hear!Only across the inner skyThe wing of a shadowy thought flits by,Vague and featureless, faceless, drear--Only a thinness to catch the eye:Is it a dim foreboding unborn,Or a buried memory, wasted and wornAs the fading frost of a wintry sigh?Anon I shall have it!--anon!--it draws nigh!A night when--a something it was took placeThat drove the blood from that scared moon-face!Hark! was that the cry of a goat,Or the gurgle of water in a throat?Hush! there is nothing to see or hear,Only a silent something is near;No knock, no footsteps three or four,Only a presence outside the door!See! the moon is remembering!--what?The wail of a mother-left, lie-alone brat?Or a raven sharpening its beak to peck?Or a cold blue knife and a warm white neck?Or only a heart that burst and ceasedFor a man that went away released?I know not--know not, but something is comingSomehow back with an inward humming!

V. Ha! look there! look at that house,Forsaken of all things, beetle and mouse!Mark how it looks! It must have a soul!It looks, it looks, though it cannot stir!See the ribs of it, how they stare!Its blind eyes yet have a seeing air!It knows it has a soul!Haggard it hangs o'er the slimy pool,And gapes wide open as corpses gape:It is the very murderer!The ghost has modelled himself to the shapeOf this drear house all sodden with woeWhere the deed was done, long, long ago,And filled with himself his new body full--To haunt for ever his ghastly crime,And see it come and go--Brooding around it like motionless time,With a mouth that gapes, and eyes that yawnBlear and blintering and full of the moon,Like one aghast at a hellish dawn!--The deed! the deed! it is coming soon!

VI. For, ever and always, when round the tuneGrinds on the barrel of organ-Time,The deed is done. And it comes anon:True to the roll of the clock-faced moon,True to the ring of the spheric chime,True to the cosmic rhythm and rime,Every point, as it first fell out,Will come and go in the fearsome bout.See! palsied with horror from garret to core,The house cannot shut its gaping door;Its burst eye stares as if trying to see,And it leans as if settling heavily,Settling heavy with sickness dull:It also is hearing the soundless hummingOf the wheel that is turning--the thing that is coming!On the naked rafters of its brain,Gaunt and wintred, see the trainOf gossiping, scandal-mongering crowsThat watch, all silent, with necks a-strain,Wickedly knowing, with heads awryAnd the sharpened gleam of a cunning eye--Watch, through the cracks of the ruined skull,How the evil business goes!--Beyond the eyes of the cherubim,Beyond the ears of the seraphim,Outside, forsaken, in the dimPhantom-haunted chaos grimHe stands, with the deed going on in him!

VII. O winds, winds, that lurk and peepUnder the edge of the moony fringe!O winds, winds, up and sweep,Up and blow and billow the air,Billow the air with blow and swinge,Rend me this ghastly house of groans!Rend and scatter the skeleton's bonesOver the deserts and mountains bare!Blast and hurl and shiver asideNailed sticks and mortared stones!Clear the phantom, with torrent and tide,Out of the moon and out of my brain,That the light may fall shadowless in again!

VIII. But, alas, then the ghostO'er mountain and coastWould go roaming, roaming! and never was swineThat, grubbing and talking with snork and whineOn Gadarene mountains, had taken him inBut would rush to the lake to unhouse the sin!For any charnelThis ghost is too carnal;There is no volcano, burnt out and cold,Whose very ashes are gray and old,But would cast him forth in reviving flameTo blister the sky with a smudge of shame!

IX. Is there no help? none anywhereUnder the earth or above the air?--Come, sad woman, whose tender throatHas a red-lipped mouth that can sing no note!Child, whose midwife, the third grim Fate,Shears in hand, thy coming did wait!Father, with blood-bedabbled hair!Mother, all withered with love's despair!Come, broken heart, whatever thou be,Hasten to help this misery!Thou wast only murdered, or left forlorn:He is a horror, a hate, a scorn!Come, if out of the holiest blueThat the sapphire throne shines through;For pity come, though thy fair feet standNext to the elder-band;Fling thy harp on the hyaline,Hurry thee down the spheres divine;Come, and drive those ravens away;Cover his eyes from the pitiless moon,Shadow his brain from her stinging spray;Droop around him, a tent of love,An odour of grace, a fanning dove;Walk through the house with the healing tuneOf gentle footsteps; banish the shapeRemorse calls up thyself to ape;Comfort him, dear, with pardon sweet;Cool his heart from its burning heatWith the water of life that laves the feetOf the throne of God, and the holy street!

X. O God, he is but a living blot,Yet he lives by thee--for if thou wast not,They would vanish together, self-forgot,He and his crime:--one breathing blownFrom thy spirit on his would all atone,Scatter the horror, and bring reliefIn an amber dawn of holy grief!God, give him sorrow; arise from within,His primal being, deeper than sin!

XI. Why do I tremble, a creature at bay?'Tis but a dream--I drive it away.Back comes my breath, and my heart againPumps the red blood to my fainting brainReleased from the nightmare's nine-fold train:God is in heaven--yes, everywhere,And Love, the all-shining, will kill Despair!--To the wall's blank eyeless spaceI turn the picture's face.

XII. But why is the moon so bare, up there?And why is she so white?And why does the moon so stare, up there--Strangely stare, out of the night?Why stand up the poplarsThat still way?And why do those two of themStart astray?And out of the black why hangs the gray?Why does it hang down so, I say,Over that house, like a fringed pallWhere the dead goes by in a funeral?--Soul of mine,Thou the reason canst divine:Into thee the moon doth stareWith pallid, terror-smitten air!Thou, and the Horror lonely-stark,Outcast of eternal dark,Are in nature same and one,And thy story is not done!So let the picture face thee from the wall,And let its white moon stare!