"A jolly place, said he, in days of old,
But something ails it now: the spot is curst."
HARTLEAP WELL, BY WORDSWORTH.
SOME dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,
Unnatural and full of contradictions;
Yet others of our most romantic schemes
Are something more than fictions.
It might be only on enchanted ground;
It might be merely by a thought's expansion;
But in the spirit, or the flesh, I found
An old deserted mansion.
A residence for woman, child, and man,
A dwelling-place-and yet no habitation;
A house-but under some prodigious ban
Of excommunication.
Unhinged the iron gates half open hung,
Jarr'd by the gusty gales of many winters,
That from its crumbled pedestal had flung
One marble globe in splinters.
No dog was at the threshold, great or small;
No pigeon on the roof-no household creature-
No cat demurely dozing on the wall-
Not one domestic feature.
No human figure stirred, to go or come,
No face looked forth from shut or open casement;
No chimney smoked-there was no sign of home
From parapet to basement.
With shatter'd panes the grassy court was starr'd;
The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after;
And thro' the ragged roof the sky shone, barr'd
With naked beam and rafter.
O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!
The flow'r grew wild and rankly as the weed,
Roses with thistles struggled for espial,
And vagrant plants of parasitic breed
Had overgrown the dial.
But gay or gloomy, steadfast or infirm,
No heart was there to heed the hour's duration;
All times and tides were lost in one long term
Of stagnant desolation.
The wren had built within the porch, she found
Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;
And on the lawn-within its turfy mound-
The rabbit made his burrow.
The rabbit wild and grey, that flitted thro'
The shrubby clumps, and frisk'd, and sat, and vanish d, But leisurely and bold, as if he knew
The wary crow-the pheasant from the woods
Lull'd by the still and everlasting sameness,
Close to the mansion, like domestic broods,
The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,
Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;
And in the weedy moat the heron, fond
Of solitude, alighted.
The moping heron, motionless and stiff,
That on a stone, as silently and stilly,
Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if
To guard the water-lily.
No sound was heard except, from far away,
The ringing of the Whitwall's shrilly laughter,
Or, now and then, the chatter of the jay,
That Echo murmur'd after.
But Echo never mock'd the human tongue;
Some weighty crime, that Heaven could not pardon,
A secret curse on that old building hung,
And its deserted garden.
The beds were all untouch'd by hand or tool;
No footstep marked the damp and mossy gravel,
Each walk as green as is the mantled pool,
For want of human travel.
The vine unprun'd, and the neglected peach,
Droop'd from the wall with which they used to grapple;
And on the canker'd tree, in easy reach,
But awfully the truant shunn'd the ground,
The vagrant kept aloof, and daring poacher;
In spite of gaps that thro' the fences round
Invited the encroacher.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!
The pear and quince lay squander'd on the grass;
The mould was purple with unheeded showers
Of bloomy plums-a wilderness it was
Of fruits, and weeds, and flowers!
The marigold amidst the nettles blew,
The gourd embraced the rose-bush in its ramble,
The thistle and the stock together grew,
The holly-hock and bramble.
The bear-bine with the lilac interlac'd,
The sturdy burdock choked its slender neighbor,
The spicy pink. All tokens were effac'd
Of human care and labor.
The very yew formality had train'd
To such a rigid pyramidal stature,
For want of trimming had almost regain'd
The raggedness of nature.
The fountain was a-dry-neglect and time
Had marr'd the work of artisan and mason,
And efts and croaking frogs begot of slime,
Sprawl'd in the ruin'd bason.
The statue, fallen from its marble base,
Amidst the refuse leaves, and herbage rotten,
Lay like the idol of some by-gone race,
Its name and rites forgotten.
On ev'ry side the aspect was the same,
All ruin'd, desolate, forlorn, and savage:
No hand or foot within the precinct came
To rectify or ravage.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear
The place is haunted!
O, very gloomy is the House of Wo,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities which show
That Death is in the dwelling!
O very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!
But House of Wo, and hearse, and sable pall,
The narrow home of the departed mortal,
Ne'er looked so gloomy as that ghostly hall,
With its deserted portal!
The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding-sheet the maggot slept,
At every nook and angle.
The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps had old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.
As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider's tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
O'er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.
Howbeit, the door I pushed-or so I dreamed
Which slowly, slowly gaped-the hinges creaking
|