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Poetry of Joyce Kilmer
Trees and Other Poems
The House with Nobody in It
Whenever I walk to Suffern
along the Erie
track
I go by a poor old farmhouse
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 with nobody in it.
I never have seen a haunted
house, but I hear there are such things;
That they hold the talk of
spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
I know this 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 the vines should be trimmed and tied;
But what it needs the most of
all is some people living inside.
If I had a lot 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 it used to be
And I’d find some people who
wanted a home and give it to them free.
Now, a new house 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 is 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 held up his stumbling feet,
Is that 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.
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