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Classic and Contemporary Poetry


REVERBERATION by JOHN HALL WHEELOCK

First Line: AT NIGHT IN THE OLD HOUSE OF LIFE I LIE ALONE
Last Line: OF MY HEART'S FOREST A FAR HORN SOUNDS DROWSILY . . .
Subject(s): DUST; LOVE - LOSS OF; SOLITUDE; LONELINESS;

At night in the old house of life I lie alone:
Spiders have fastened their soft webs, like clouds, between

Rafter and ceiling; thereshold and gray floor are grown
Heavy with dust, where for so long no foot has been.

Mice in the dark of the old walls gnaw at the deep
Roots of the night, and softly on the dewy air
The cricket's cry comes drifting in -- even in sleep
I hear it; but I am too sorrowful to care.

Love has left me and Song has left me, and I know
I am a harp silent to all those lovely Things
That laid such hands upon me here so long ago.
Night deepens. Echo slumbers along the strings --

Only the murmur, vaguely felt, of the hushed blood
That on the shores of the old dream, like a vast sea,
Moves in the darkness, morning; and in the solitude
Of my heart's forest a far horn sounds drowsily . . .



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