The Haunted House
Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,With all the dark solemnities that showThat Death is in the dwelling!
Oh, very, very dreary is the roomWhere Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,But smitten by the common stroke of doom,The corpse lies on the trestles!
But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,The narrow home of the departed mortal,Ne’er looked so gloomy as that Ghostly Hall,With its deserted portal!
The centipede along the threshold crept,The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,And in its winding sheet the maggot sleptAt every nook and angle.
The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,The emmets of the steps has old possession,And marched in search of their diurnal foodIn undisturbed procession.
As undisturbed as the prehensile cellOf moth or maggot, or the spider’s tissue,For never foot upon that threshold fell,To enter or to issue.
O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear,A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,The place is haunted.
Howbeit, the door I pushed—or so I dreamed--Which slowly, slowly gaped, the hinges creakingWith such a rusty eloquence, it seemedThat Time himself was speaking.
But Time was dumb within that mansion old,Or left his tale to the heraldic bannersThat hung from the corroded walls, and toldOf former men and manners.
Those tattered flags, that with the opened door,Seemed the old wave of battle to remember,While fallen fragments danced upon the floorLike dead leaves in December.
The startled bats flew out, bird after bird,The screech-owl overhead began to flutter,And seemed to mock the cry that she had heardSome dying victim utter!
A shriek that echoed from the joisted roof,And up the stair, and further still and further,Till in some ringing chamber far aloofIn ceased its tale of murther!
Meanwhile the rusty armor rattled round,The banner shuddered, and the ragged streamer;All things the horrid tenor of the soundAcknowledged with a tremor.
The antlers where the helmet hung, and belt,Stirred as the tempest stirs the forest branches,Or as the stag had trembled when he feltThe bloodhound at his haunches.
The window jingled in its crumbled frame,And through its many gaps of destitutionDolorous moans and hollow sighings came,Like those of dissolution.
The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic;And nameless beetles ran along the wallIn universal panic.
The subtle spider, that, from overhead,Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,Suddenly turned, and up its slender threadRan with a nimble terror.
The very stains and fractures on the wall,Assuming features solemn and terrific,Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,Locked up in hieroglyphic.
Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,Wherefore, among those flags so dull and livid,The banner of the bloody hand shone outSo ominously vivid.
Some key to that inscrutable appealWhich made the very frame of Nature quiver,And every thrilling nerve and fiber feelSo ague-like a shiver.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,The place is haunted!
Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread,But through one gloomy entrance pointing mostly,The while some secret inspiration said,“That chamber is the ghostly!”
Across the door no gossamer festoonSwung pendulous, --no web, no dusty fringes,No silky chrysalis or white cocoon,About its nooks and hinges.
The spider shunned the interdicted room,The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,The very midge had vanished.
One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,As if with awful aim direct and certain,To show the Bloody Hand, in burning red,Embroidered on the curtain.
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