Classic Poem

Oh house with two doors that is mine,
vast and shadowy dwelling of the heart,
that in the years' procession I have seen
full sometimes of strange guests
and almost empty other times—the most!

House that in
life's smiling instants contemplated rapt
the interminable flow of dreams,
not slow to come, not slow to go again.

How few the travellers who on their departure
left, for future passers by this way,
a fire burning
at the goodly door by which they went
or a noble inscription on the walls!

Mostly they left, in the uncertain radiance
of an untimely sundown,
some rag behind on the deserted threshold,
the wandering soul of some dead song of praise
or a wornness of stone beneath their tread.

Alone in the silence and the peace
of night, an unknown guest suspends
his quiet lamp. . . .
And my faint-spirited disquiet wonders
if it is a weary love arriving
late or an old sorrow not yet gone.