The Two Houses

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp In the heart of night,
&nbsp       &nbsp When farers were not near,
&nbsp The left house said to the house on the right,
“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp Said the right, cold-eyed:
&nbsp       &nbsp “Newcomer here I am,
&nbsp Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,
Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Modern my wood,
&nbsp       &nbsp My hangings fair of hue;
&nbsp While my windows open as they should,
And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Your gear is gray,
&nbsp       &nbsp Your face wears furrows untold.”
&nbsp “ - Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother,
The Presences from aforetime that I hold.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “You have not known
&nbsp       &nbsp Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
&nbsp You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Void as a drum
&nbsp       &nbsp You stand: I am packed with these,
&nbsp Though, strangely, living dwellers who come
See not the phantoms all my substance sees!

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Visible in the morning
&nbsp       &nbsp Stand they, when dawn drags in;
&nbsp Visible at night; yet hint or warning
Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Babes new-brought-forth
&nbsp       &nbsp Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched
&nbsp Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;
Yea, throng they as when first from the ‘Byss upfetched.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Dancers and singers
&nbsp       &nbsp Throb in me now as once;
&nbsp Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers
Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Note here within
&nbsp       &nbsp The bridegroom and the bride,
&nbsp Who smile and greet their friends and kin,
And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Where such inbe,
&nbsp       &nbsp A dwelling’s character
&nbsp Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy
To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Yet the blind folk
&nbsp       &nbsp My tenants, who come and go
&nbsp In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke,
Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “ - Will the day come,”
&nbsp       &nbsp Said the new one, awestruck, faint,
&nbsp “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb -
And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”

&nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “ - That will it, boy;
&nbsp       &nbsp Such shades will people thee,
&nbsp Each in his misery, irk, or joy,
And print on thee their presences as on me.”