Thomas Hardy's Max Gate, 1927: The Light from the Window, A Winter Night's Impression, Donald Maxwell

The Strange House

(MAX GATE, A.D. 2000)

"I hear the piano playing--

Just as a ghost might play."

"--O, but what are you saying?

There's no piano to-day;

Their old one was sold and broken;

Years past it went amiss."

"--I heard it, or shouldn't have spoken:

A strange house, this!

"I catch some undertone here,

From some one out of sight."

"--Impossible; we are alone here,

And shall be through the night."

"--The parlour-door--what stirred it?"

"--No one: no soul's in range."

"--But, anyhow, I heard it,

And it seems strange!

"Seek my own room I cannot--

A figure is on the stair!"

"--What figure? Nay, I scan not

Any one lingering there.

A bough outside is waving,

And that's its shade by the moon."

"--Well, all is strange! I am craving

Strength to leave soon."

"--Ah, maybe you've some vision

Of showings beyond our sphere;

Some sight, sense, intuition

Of what once happened here?

The house is old; they've hinted

It once held two love-thralls,

And they may have imprinted

Their dreams on its walls?

"They were--I think 'twas told me--

Queer in their works and ways;

The teller would often hold me

With weird tales of those days.

Some folk can not abide here,

But we--we do not care

Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,

Knew joy, or despair."

Thomas Hardy