The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 2/Number 5/The Dead House

by James Russell Lowell

 

The Dead House.

 

Here once my step was quickened,
⁠Here beckoned the opening door,
And welcome thrilled from the threshold
⁠To the foot it had felt before.

A glow came forth to meet me
⁠From the flame that laughed in the grate,
And shadows a-dance on the ceiling
⁠Danced blither with mine for a mate.

"I claim you, old friend," yawned the arm-chair,—
⁠"This corner, you know, is your seat."
"Rest your slippers on me," beamed the fender,—
⁠"I brighten at touch of your feet."

"We know the practised finger,"
⁠Said the books, "that seems like brain";
And the shy page rustled the secret
⁠It had kept till I came again.

Sang the pillow, "My down once quivered
⁠On nightingales' throats that flew
Through moonlit gardens of Hafiz
⁠To gather quaint dreams for you."

Ah, me, where the Past sowed heart's-ease,
⁠The Present plucks rue for us men!
I come back: that scar unhealing
⁠Was not in the churchyard then.

But, I think, the house is unaltered;
⁠I will go and beg to look
At the rooms that were once familiar
⁠To my life as its bed to a brook.

Unaltered! Alas for the sameness
⁠That makes the change but more!
'Tis a dead man I see in the mirrors,
⁠'Tis his tread that chills the floor!

To learn such a simple lesson
⁠Need I go to Paris and Rome,—
That the many make a household,
⁠But only one the home?

'Twas just a womanly presence,
⁠An influence unexprest,—

But a rose she had worn on my grave-sod
⁠Were more than long life with the rest!

'Twas a smile, 'twas a garment's rustle,
⁠'Twas nothing that I can phrase,—
But the whole dumb dwelling grew conscious,
⁠And put on her looks and ways.

Were it mine, I would close the shutters,
⁠Like lids when the life is fled,
And the funeral fire should wind it,
⁠This corpse of a home that is dead.

For it died that autumn morning
⁠When she, its soul, was borne
To lie all dark on the hillside
⁠That looks over woodland and corn.