"The Deserted House" (A Poem)

“The Deserted House” was Lizette Woodworth Reese’s first published poem, appearing within The Southern Magazine in 1874 and becoming one of many works where the poet examines the darker side of life.[1] Detailing the forsaken grounds of an old manor, the poem hints at the ghosts of the past and how they linger in the silent confines of abandoned places.

To the sweet memory of Sidney Lanier

The old house stands deserted, gray,
With sharpened gables high in air,
And deep-set lattices, all gay
With massive arch and framework rare;
And o’er it is a silence laid,
That feeling, one grows sore afraid.

The eaves are dark with heavy vines;
The steep roof wears a coat of moss;
The walls are touched with dim designs
Of shadows moving slow across;
The balconies are damp with weeds,
Lifting as close as streamside reeds.

The garden is a loved retreat
Of melancholy flowers, of lone
And wild-mouthed herbs, in companies sweet,
‘Mid desolate green grasses thrown;
And in its gaps the hoar stone wall
Lets sprays of tangled ivy fall.

The pebbled paths drag, here and there,
Old lichened faces, overspun
With silver spider-threads-they wear
A silence sad to look upon:
It is so long since happy feet
Made them to thrill with pressure sweet.

The fountain stands where crowd the trees,
And solemn branches o’er it part:
How human sound its melodies!
“A broken heart – a broken heart!”
For this is all it hath to say
Throughout the livelong summer’s day.

The dial marks a terrace low,
Its uncouth visage weird with time,
With one black shadow moving slow,
As though it felt the fountain’s rhyme;
A pace beyond, a little stair
Of moss-grown rock leads close to where,

‘Mid drear but fragrant shrubs there stands
A saint of old made mute in stone,
With tender eyes and yearning hands,
And mouth formed in a sorrow lone;
‘Tis thick with dust, as long ago
‘Twas thick with fairest blooms that grow.

Steppeth the iron gate aside,
To point the ancient moat without
That lieth deep and cool and wide,
With many a shadow thrown about,
To whom, with dreariness untold,
It gives its legend old, old, old.

The glossy fields beyond it lie,
The solitary fields – they meet
The narrow road that stretcheth nigh
The west, and hastes with dusty feet
Where dips the city dreamily,
Half-seen, amid a purple sea.

There falls the sunshine faint with mist –
It falleth – ah! so still, so still –
The dark trees let their brows be kissed;
An e’en the dark moat hath its fill –
A far-off light, a shining lone,
As though on sacred things it shone.

The bees flit by with scarce a noise;
The fountain rhymeth mournfully;
A wind comes near with plaintive voice;
Without the moat moves drearily;
A wind with plaintive voice doth come –

It stirs a leaf and then is dumb.
Quick lizards quiver here and there
About the paths, but mute is each;
The sounds that make the summer’s air
So quaintly weird – the dull fly’s speech,
Or cricket’s drowsy ballad – thrill
Around, and yet it seems to still!

E’en to the road the calmness climbs
And then is lost; a peasant-maid
Who loiters home sings softest rhymes,
And ‘tween them pauseth half afraid
To hear the winds come slow and sweet,
And touch the grasses at her feet.

Or else, from out the distance steals,
Half heard, the tramp of oxen, or
The bleak and hoarse stir of slow wheels
Bound cityward; but more and more,
As these are hushed, or yet increase,
About the old house clings its peace.[2]

Works Referenced

Reese, Lizette Woodworth. “The Deserted House.” The Southern Magazine 14.6 (1874): 605-607.

Spangler, Matthew. “Lizette Woodworth Reese.” Southern Writers: A New Biographical Dictionary. Eds. Joseph Flora and Amber Vogel. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 2006. 337-338.
____________________
[1] Spangler, 338.
[2] Reese, 605-607.