I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
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And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
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I've never seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
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That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
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I know that house isn't haunted and I wish it were, I do,
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For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
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This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
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And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
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It needs new paint and shingles and vines should be trimmed and tied,
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But what it needs most of all is some people living inside.
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If I had a bit of money and all my debts were paid,
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I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
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I'd buy that place and fix it up the way that it used to be,
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And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
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Now a new home standing empty with staring window and door
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Looks idle perhaps and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store,
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But there's nothing mournful about it, it cannot be sad and lone
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For the lack of something within it that it has never known.
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But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
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That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
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A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and helped up his stumbling feet,
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Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
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So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
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I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
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Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
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For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.
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Joyce Kilmer.
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Color in the Wheat
Table of Contents
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Like liquid gold the wheat field lies,
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A marvel of yellow and russet and green,
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That ripples and runs, that floats and flies,
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With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen,
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That play in the golden hair of a girl—
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A ripple of amber—a flare
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Of light sweeping after—a curl
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In the hollows like swirling feet
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Of fairy waltzers, the colors run
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To the western sun
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Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.
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Broad as the fleckless, soaring sky,
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Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea,
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The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye
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Under the fierce sun's alchemy.
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The slow hawk stoops
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To his prey in the deeps;
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The sunflower droops
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To the lazy wave; the wind sleeps—
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Then swirling in dazzling links and loops,
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A riot of shadow and shine,
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A glory of olive and amber and wine,
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To the westering sun the colors run
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Through the deeps of the ripening wheat.
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O glorious land! My western land,
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Outspread beneath the setting sun!
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Once more amid your swells, I stand,
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And cross your sod-lands dry and dun.
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I hear the jocund calls of men
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Who sweep amid the ripened grain
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With swift, stern reapers; once again
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The evening splendor floods the plain,
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The crickets' chime
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Makes pauseless rhyme,
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And toward the sun,
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The colors run
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Before the wind's feet
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In the wheat!
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Hamlin Garland.
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The Broken Pinion
Table of Contents
