The house is haunted and rife
With Her touch behind panel and door
And her footfalls under the floor;
O the house is filled with gloom:
—Is She here dead in my life?
Am I here alive in her tomb?—
Ah fain am I still to track
And to walk along the ways
Sown with flowers by her feet;
And to gather, following back,
All the purple nights and days
She slew passing; or, half sweet,
To sit with dull eyes cast
On slowly dying embers
Of things the heart remembers
Right fair in the heart’s past,
—Till tones, that seem to start
From the shadows in the room,
Move round about the heart,
And a love-glow fills the gloom;
And her soul seems to look out
As from dim and distant eyes,
And a shade of lips to pout
With some remnant of her sighs.
And often too, in the night,
The flame in famished eyes
Re-kindles an old delight
At some dream-sight of her;
The heart with tremulous stir
Lives a moment and then dies.