Thomas Hardy — The Two Houses

       &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp In the heart of night,        &nbsp       &nbsp When farers were not near,        &nbsp The left house said to the house on the right, “I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp Said the right, cold-eyed:        &nbsp       &nbsp “Newcomer here I am,        &nbsp Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide, Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Modern my wood,        &nbsp       &nbsp My hangings fair of hue;        &nbsp While my windows open as they should, And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Your gear is gray,        &nbsp       &nbsp Your face wears furrows untold.”        &nbsp “ - Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother, The Presences from aforetime that I hold.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “You have not known        &nbsp       &nbsp Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;        &nbsp You are but a heap of stick and stone: A new house has no sense of the have-beens.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Void as a drum        &nbsp       &nbsp You stand: I am packed with these,        &nbsp Though, strangely, living dwellers who come See not the phantoms all my substance sees!        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Visible in the morning        &nbsp       &nbsp Stand they, when dawn drags in;        &nbsp Visible at night; yet hint or warning Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Babes new-brought-forth        &nbsp       &nbsp Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched        &nbsp Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth; Yea, throng they as when first from the ‘Byss upfetched.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Dancers and singers        &nbsp       &nbsp Throb in me now as once;        &nbsp Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Note here within        &nbsp       &nbsp The bridegroom and the bride,        &nbsp Who smile and greet their friends and kin, And down my stairs depart for tracks untried.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Where such inbe,        &nbsp       &nbsp A dwelling’s character        &nbsp Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere.        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “Yet the blind folk        &nbsp       &nbsp My tenants, who come and go        &nbsp In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke, Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.”        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “ - Will the day come,”        &nbsp       &nbsp Said the new one, awestruck, faint,        &nbsp “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb - And with such spectral guests become acquaint?”        &nbsp       &nbsp       &nbsp “ - That will it, boy;        &nbsp       &nbsp Such shades will people thee,        &nbsp Each in his misery, irk, or joy, And print on thee their presences as on me.”