LE TOUR DES FRANCS
Loneliness? when I think of loneliness
I think of the small towers of the crusaders
Built on the treeless mountains of Palestine,
Watch-towers held by half-a-dozen men,
Who were brought up in hamlets beside streams
With woods and meadows near them.
Loneliness? The night coming on,
The night that covers danger,
And hungry stars
Peering from heaven,
And the wind sweeping from ridge to stony ridge,
And a horse neighing with a shiver in it,
And some one tower with half-a-dozen men
Left isolated in a harsh inimical land.
THE OLD HOUSES
I love these old, old, houses
With their toppling roofs,
Their thresholds worn by multitudinous steps,
Their panels shining from the touch of hands
Groping through generations, their steep stairs
Creaking with memories of all the weight
They've carried through the centuries—
There's no corner
Where ghosts of happenings do not drift like dust;
The air is thick with manifold presences,
Too thick, you'd think, still to make room for more.
But like the trees of some forgotten orchard,
Hollow with rot, split open, almost dead,
Which yet feel May in blossoms round and merry
As in their first year's blooming—
So old houses
(Until their haunted roof-trees fall in ruin)
Show children's faces at their window sills,
Echo with children's calling through their rooms.
