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Home: Poetry: Robert Frost: Ghost House
| GHOST HOUSE |
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a poem by Robert Frost
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- I DWELL in a lonely house I know
- That vanished many a summer ago,
- And left no trace but the cellar walls,
- And a cellar in which the daylight falls,
- And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.
- O'er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
- The woods come back to the mowing field;
- The orchard tree has grown one copse
- Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
- The footpath down to the well is healed.
- I dwell with a strangely aching heart
- In that vanished abode there far apart
- On that disused and forgotten road
- That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
- Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;
- The whippoorwill is coming to shout
- And hush and cluck and flutter about:
- I hear him begin far enough away
- Full many a time to say his say
- Before he arrives to say it out.
- It is under the small, dim, summer star.
- I know not who these mute folk are
- Who share the unlit place with me--
- Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
- Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.
- They are tireless folk, but slow and sad,
- Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,--
- With none among them that ever sings,
- And yet, in view of how many things,
- As sweet companions as might be had.
| "Ghost House" is reprinted from A Boy's Will. Robert Frost. New York: Henry Holt & Co., 1915. |
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