Haunted House

Dionysius in Doubt: A Book of Poems (1925)

Here was a place where none would ever comeFor shelter, save as we did from the rain.We saw no ghost, yet once outside againEach wondered why the other would be dumb;For we had fronted nothing worse than gloomAnd ruin, and to our vision it was plainWhere thrift, outshivering fear, had let remainSome chairs that were like skeletons of home.

There were no trackless footsteps on the floorAbove us, and there were no sounds elsewhere.But there was more than sound; and there was moreThan just an axe that once was in the airBetween us and the chimney, long beforeOur time. So townsmen said who found her there.