A Romance.

“A jolly place, said he, in days of old,

But something ails it now: the spot is curst.”

WORDSWORTH.
Part 1.

Some dreams we have are nothing else but dreams,

Unnatural, and full of contradictions;

Yet others of our most romantic schemes

Are something more than fictions.

It might be only on enchanted ground;

It might be merely by a thought’s expansion;

But, in the spirit or the flesh, I found

An old deserted Mansion.

A residence for woman, child, and man,

A dwelling place — and yet no habitation;

A House — but under some prodigious ban

Of excommunication.

Unhinged the iron gates half open hung,

Jarr’d by the gusty gales of many winters,

That from its crumbled pedestal had flung

One marble globe in splinters.

No dog was at the threshold, great or small;

No pigeon on the roof — no household creature —

No cat demurely dozing on the wall —

Not one domestic feature.

No human figure stirr’d, to go or come,

No face look’d forth from shut or open casement;

No chimney smoked — there was no sign of Home

From parapet to basement.

With shatter’d panes the grassy court was starr’d;

The time-worn coping-stone had tumbled after;

And thro’ the ragged roof the sky shone, barr’d

With naked beam and rafter.

O’er all there hung a shadow and a fear;

A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,

And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,

The place is Haunted!

The flow’r grew wild and rankly as the weed,

Roses with thistles struggled for espial,

And vagrant plants of parasitic breed

Had overgrown the Dial.

But gay or gloomy, steadfast or infirm,

No heart was there to heed the hour’s duration;

All times and tides were lost in one long term

Of stagnant desolation.

The wren had built within the Porch, she found

Its quiet loneliness so sure and thorough;

And on the lawn — within its turfy mound —

The rabbit made his burrow.

The rabbit wild and gray, that flitted thro’

The shrubby clumps, and frisk’d, and sat, and vanish’d,

But leisurely and bold, as if he knew

His enemy was banish’d.

The wary crow — the pheasant from the woods —

Lull’d by the still and everlasting sameness,

Close to the mansion, like domestic broods,

Fed with a “shocking tameness.”

The coot was swimming in the reedy pond,

Beside the water-hen, so soon affrighted;

And in the weedy moat the heron, fond

Of solitude, alighted.

The moping heron, motionless and stiff,

That on a stone, as silently and stilly,

Stood, an apparent sentinel, as if

To guard the water-lily.

No sound was heard except, from far away,

The ringing of the witwall’s shrilly laughter,

Or, now and then, the chatter of the jay,

That Echo murmur’d after.

But Echo never mock’d the human tongue;

Some weighty crime, that Heaven could not pardon,

A secret curse on that old Building hung,

And its deserted Garden.

The beds were all untouch’d by hand or tool;

No footstep marked the damp and mossy gravel,

Each walk as green as is the mantled pool,

For want of human travel.

The vine unpruned, and the neglected peach,

Droop’d from the wall with which they used to grapple;

And on the canker’d tree, in easy reach,

Rotted the golden apple.

But awfully the truant shunn’d the ground,

The vagrant kept aloof, and daring Poacher;

In spite of gaps that thro’ the fences round

Invited the encroacher.

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!

The pear and quince lay squander’d on the grass;

The mould was purple with unheeded showers

Of bloomy plums — a Wilderness it was

Of fruits, and weeds, and flowers!

The marigold amidst the nettles blew,

The gourd embraced the rose bush in its ramble,

The thistle and the stock together grew,

The holly-hock and bramble.

The bear-bine with the lilac interlaced,

The sturdy bur-dock choked its slender neighbor,

The spicy pink. All tokens were effaced

Of human care and labor.

The very yew Formality had train’d

To such a rigid pyramidal stature,

For want of trimming had almost regain’d

The raggedness of nature.

The Fountain was a-dry — neglect and time

Had marr’d the work of artisan and mason,

And efts and croaking frogs, begot of slime,

Sprawl’d in the ruin’d bason.

The Statue, fallen from its marble base,

Amidst the refuse leaves, and herbage rotten,

Lay like the Idol of some bygone race,

Its name and rites forgotten.

On ev’ry side the aspect was the same,

All ruin’d, desolate, forlorn, and savage:

No hand or foot within the precinct came

To rectify or ravage.

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!
Part 2.

O, very gloomy is the House of Woe,

Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,

With all the dark solemnities which show

That Death is in the dwelling!

O very, very dreary is the room

Where 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 look’d 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 slept,

At every nook and angle.

The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,

The emmets of the steps had old possession,

And march’d in search of their diurnal food

In undisturb’d procession.

As undisturb’d as the prehensile cell

Of 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 push’d — or so I dream’d —

Which slowly, slowly gaped — the hinges creaking

With such a rusty eloquence, it seem’d

That Time himself was speaking.

But Time was dumb within that Mansion old,

Or left his tale to the heraldic banners,

That hung from the corroded walls, and told

Of former men and manners:—

Those tatter’d flags, that with the open’d door,

Seem’d the old wave of battle to remember,

While fallen fragments danced upon the floor,

Like dead leaves in December.

The startled bats flew out — bird after bird —

The screech-owl overhead began to flutter,

And seem’d to mock the cry that she had heard

Some 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 aloof

It ceased its tale of murther!

Meanwhile the rusty armor rattled round,

The banner shudder’d, and the ragged streamer;

All things the horrid tenor of the sound

Acknowledged with a tremor.

The antlers, where the helmet hung, and belt,

Stirr’d as the tempest stirs the forest branches,

Or as the stag had trembled when he felt

The blood-hound at his haunches.

The window jingled in its crumbled frame,

And t............