Page:American Poetry 1922.djvu/189



When the tree bares, the music of it changes: Hard and keen is the sound, long and mournful; Pale are the poplar boughs in the evening light Above my house, against a slate-cold cloud. When the house ages and the tenants leave it, Cricket sings in the tall grass by the threshold; Spider, by the cold mantel, hangs his web. Here, in a hundred years from that clear season When first I came here, bearing lights and music, To this old ghostly house my ghost will come,— Pause in the half-light, turn by the poplar, glide Above tall grasses through the broken door. Who will say that he saw—or the dusk deceived him— A mist with hands of mist blow down from the tree And open the door and enter and close it after? Who will say that he saw, as midnight struck Its tremulous golden twelve, a light in the window, And first heard music, as of an old piano, Music remote, as if it came from the earth, Far down; and then, in the quiet, eager voices? ". . . Houses grow old and die, houses have ghosts— Once in a hundred years we return, old house, And live once more." . . . And then the ancient answer, In a voice not human, but more like creak of boards 175