Classic Poem

Down the long walk in mouldy solitude
There stands a castle crumbling to decay,
O'er whose desertion noon and midnight brood
With melancholy sway.

A dreary mansion, dusty, dim and old,
Whose doors shut in strange memories of dead cares
Like ghosts that wander sad and unconsoled
About the rooms and stairs.

A house of contrasts — peacefulness and strife,
Content and fretfulness, and love and hate,
Sober existence, and light-hearted life,
The lamb and lion mate;

The idle wanton and the righteous man,
The faithful servant and the steward unjust,
With all the types that twice a century's span
Could mould in human dust.

Fondling the moments of a mute caress
Lovers have lingered in those window-nooks,
And there with hours of labour lost no less
Men bound their lives in books.

There boon companions led the night astray,
While close at hand the weary courted rest,
And clamorous curses rose in foul array
Near murmured words that blessed.

A hundred scenes these haunted limits knew!
What pleasant parties after festal cheer,
Have said good-night, and climbed the stairs to woo
Day's death on downy bier!

What generations called the house a home
Since from the bridal, first its founder came,
Till the last son of sorrow chose his doom
Of suicidal shame!

When down the stairs the servants slowly bore
The dreadful burden from the upper room,
Whose shadow clouds and shrouds and evermore
Surrounds the house with gloom!

No life now dwells where children once grew strong
And old folk yielded age's slow demands,
Since even Death was there Time has toiled long
With his relentless hands.

No human sound is ever heard within;
A phantom race remain its only heirs
Who haunt the rooms and make a ghostly din
That echoes on the stairs.

Dear heart! shall all our homes thus lie so waste,
And with the record of our period's peers
Oblivion take ourselves as men misplaced
Among the newer years?