Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two. Various
The House with Nobody In It
Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track |
I go by a poor old farm-house with its shingles broken and black; |
I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute |
And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it. |
I've never seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; |
That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. |
I know that house isn't haunted and I wish it were, I do, |
For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. |
This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, |
And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. |
It needs new paint and shingles and vines should be trimmed and tied, |
But what it needs most of all is some people living inside. |
If I had a bit of money and all my debts were paid, |
I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. |
I'd buy that place and fix it up the way that it used to be, |
And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free. |
Now a new home standing empty with staring window and door |
Looks idle perhaps and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store, |
But there's nothing mournful about it, it cannot be sad and lone |
For the lack of something within it that it has never known. |
But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, |
That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, |
A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and helped up his stumbling feet, |
Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. |
So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track |
I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, |
Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, |
For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. |
Joyce Kilmer. |
Color in the Wheat
Like liquid gold the wheat field lies, |
A marvel of yellow and russet and green, |
That ripples and runs, that floats and flies, |
With the subtle shadows, the change, the sheen, |
That play in the golden hair of a girl— |
A ripple of amber—a flare |
Of light sweeping after—a curl |
In the hollows like swirling feet |
Of fairy waltzers, the colors run |
To the western sun |
Through the deeps of the ripening wheat. |
Broad as the fleckless, soaring sky, |
Mysterious, fair as the moon-led sea, |
The vast plain flames on the dazzled eye |
Under the fierce sun's alchemy. |