Thomas Hardy

The Strange House

  (Max Gate, A.D. 2000)

‘I hear the piano playing –
Just as a ghost might play.’
‘ – O, but what are you saying?
There’s no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
Years past it went amiss.’
‘ – I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:
A strange house, this!

‘I catch some undertone here,
From some one out of sight.’
‘ – Impossible; we are alone here,
And shall be through the night.’
‘ – The parlour-door – what stirred it?’
‘ – No one: no soul’s in range.’
‘ – But, anyhow, I heard it,
And it seems strange!

‘Seek my own room I cannot –
A figure is on the stair!’
‘ – What figure? Nay, I scan not
Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
And that’s its shade by the moon.’
‘ – Well, all is strange! I am craving
Strength to leave soon.’

‘ – Ah, maybe you’ve some vision
Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they’ve hinted
It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
Their dreams on its walls?

‘They were – I think ’twas told me –
Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
But we – we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
Knew joy, or despair.’