"But where is the silent guest?
In what chamber shall she rest?
In this! Should she not go higher?
'T is damp, and the fire is gone."
"You need not kindle the fire,
You need not call her at dawn."
Next morn he sallied forth
On his journey to the North.
O, bright the sunlight shone
Through boughs that the breezes stir;
But for her was lifted a stone
Under the churchyard fir.
THE HOMESTEAD
I
Here stays the house, here stay the selfsame places,
Here the white lilacs and the buttonwoods;
Here the dark pine-groves, there the river-floods,
And there the threading brook that interlaces
Green meadow-bank with meadow-bank the same.
The melancholy nightly chorus came
Long, long ago from the same pool, and yonder
Stark poplars lift in the same twilight air
Their ancient lonelinesses; nearer, fonder,
The black-heart cherry-tree's gaunt branches bare
Rasp on the same old window where I ponder.
II
And we, the only living, only pass;
We come and go, whither and whence we know not.
From birth to bound the same house keeps, alas!
