Poem by Thomas Hardy

The House of Silence

‘That is a quiet place –
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.’
‘ – If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
And a brain spins there till dawn.’

‘But I see nobody there, –
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.’
‘ – Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
To pierce the material screen.

‘Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
Make all the precincts gleam.

‘It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
An aion in an hour.’

1. Genitrix Laesa
2. The Sleep-Worker
3. Song from Heine
4. Nothing Matters Much
5. Timing Her

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