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 | The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder |  |
THE OLD HOUSE
I
Home of my forebears, home of my dreaming childhood,House that I love with a love instinctive, changeless,
Ancestral, mystical, passionate, tender, sorrowful;
Old house where I was born and my mother before me—
Strangely the old house speaks to its child returning,
Speaks with a tone affectionate, intimate, sweet,
Made, mysterious, out of the voices of many—
Out of the accents of them, the loving, the loyal,
That still in memory soothe and murmur and call;
Voices that greeted my life and guided the journey,
Human voices, long hushed, and the subtler speech
That steals from the dumb, dead walls, and whispers and thrills,
From the shadowy chimney-places, and haunted nooks;
These centuried walls, this roof, and the buoyant branches
Of large-leaved, mottled buttonwoods, towering mightily,
And pines that my father planted, now loftily dying—
These are the vibrant notes of the one deep chord
That sings in my heart, here by the ancient hearthstone.
II
Five are the generations this place have humaned,Leaving their impress, I think, on the breathèd air—
For full is the house of relics of lives departed:
410
Bringing the Orient's touch to the wondering child;
And Arctic gatherings; hints of the torrid zone;
And quaint embroideries worked by hands ancestral,
Deft for the spinning of flax on these silent wheels;
Books of a day when each was a treasure, a star—
And chief of them all, to the trembling heart of a boy,
The verse of him, the singer of song sonorous,
Whose voice was the voice of trumpets and many waters,
Whose soul went forth with angels and archangels,
Nor stood dismayed before the Eternal presence.
Pictures of faces whose features I see in my own—
That I see re-imaged by laws unfathomed, fateful,
In my own children's pleading, innocent faces;
Volumes of lores outgrown, or a living art;
Bibles and books of devotion, where names are enrolled
In letters that fade like the image of souls long dead.
Not without tears may I ponder the yellowing leaves
Where record was made of secretest dreams and prayers—
Records of love accomplished, or unfulfilled.
Were the agèd faces I knew, the timorous maidens
Who, wistful, their innocent passions here hinted, or hid?
This wife new-married, so young, so sweet, so appealing,
Was this the angelical mother, she of great sorrows,
Loving and dreaming in age, as in palpitant girlhood?
This lock, among many a tress so lovingly treasured—
Ah, this is my own, by hands that I knew so well,
Cut from a golden head that long has been silvered.
III
The old house speaks, and low, in the glimmering twilight,It murmurs of days that are gone, and spirits lamented;
A girlish face with a smile all radiant, loving—
411
Doth that smile illume, that voice bring joy as of old?
This quaint and closeted chamber, ah, here was unfolded
The love of a child for a child, through years and through sorrows
Remembered and cherished by each,—the love of the old
For the old, now,—the love of the old for lost youth
And comrades long gone, and loved and remembered together.
And she with the heart of a queen, and the soul of a martyr;
In young days serene, and blithe and undaunted in age,
Who loved the old house, even as I,—her birthplace, her refuge,—
She in a vision comes near; and quick I remember
One night of all nights, when a messenger stood in the doorway—
Silent he stood, and we knew the message unspoken!
O night of nights, when a wife turned sudden a widow,
And a child, 'neath the solacing stars, passed swift into manhood.
IV
But of childhood the old house whispers and murmurs to-night,Of the twilight hour in the arms of her the beloved
And loving sister of her who gave me my being—
Who like a second mother encompassed my childhood
With song and with story, with gleams of fairy and hero,
Chanting in twilight gray the ancient ballads,
Or crooning, as if to herself, the love-songs of girlhood;
Or, again, she fashioned the tales of her own young days:
Of the country balls, in the time when winter was winter,
And the snows were piled—high as the head of a man,
And the ringing sleighs sped over the fields and the fences
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When the dancing would last till dawn, and the dancers flew
From village to village, and tavern to tavern, all night;
Turning the snow-lit dark to rollicking day.
O days and nights of a far and happy world!
V
Of childhood the old house whispers, of wintry sportsWith sled and skate on the ponds long filled and forgotten;
Wild joys of meadow, and woods, and waters; of branches
Laden with black-heart cherries, where boys and birds
Alternate shared the wealth of the aery feast.
Of boyhood the old house whispers, of moonlit voyages
On the wooded stream, that wound in silent reaches,
Far through the mystic land of awakening life.
VI
And now, in the twilight hour, dear, living voices,The voices of children I hear, they come to my call;
And I tell of the days that are gone, and they hark with delight—
As I, in my youth, heard the tales of the ancient days;
Then good-night, and to bed! But the teller of ancient tales
Stays by the dying fire and listens, again,
To the thronging voices that murmur to him alone.
| The Poems of Richard Watson Gilder | |