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Classic and Contemporary Poetry
IN THIS DARK HOUSE, by EDWARD DAVISON Poet's Biography First Line: I shall come back to die Last Line: To this dark house to die. Subject(s): Houses | |||
I SHALL come back to die From a far place at last After my life's carouse In the old bed to lie, Remembering the past In this dark house. Because of a clock's chime In the long waste of night I shall awake and wait At that calm lonely time Each smell and sound and sight Mysterious and innate: Some shadow on the wall When curtains by the door Move in a draught of wind; Or else a light footfall In a near corridor; Even to feel the kind Caress of a cool hand Smoothing the draggled hair Back from my shrunken brow, And strive to understand The woman's presence there, And whence she came, and how. What gust of wind that night Shall mutter her lost name Through windows open wide, And twist the flickering light Of a sole candle's flame Smoking from side to side, Till the last spark it blows Sets a moth's wings aflare As the faint flame goes out? Some distant door may close; Perhaps a heavy chair On bare floors dragged about O'er the low ceiling sound, And the thin twig of a tree Knock on my window-pane Till all the night around Is listening with me, While like a noise of rain Leaves rustle in the wind. Then from the inner gloom The scratching of a mouse May echo down my mind And sound around the room In this dark house. The vague scent of a flower, Smelt then in that warm air From gardens drifting in, May slowly overpower The vapid lavender, Till feebly I begin To count the scents I knew And name them one by one And search the names for this. Dreams will be swift and few Ere that last night be done, And gradual silences In each long interim Of halting time awake Confuse all conscious sense. Shadows will grow more dim, And sound and scent forsake The dark ere dawn commence. In the new morning then, So fixed the stare and fast, The calm unseeing eye Will never close again. I shall come back at last To this dark house to die. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...TWO-RIVER LEDGER by KHALED MATTAWA SEVEN TWILIGHTS: 3 by CONRAD AIKEN FOR THE REBUILDING OF A HOUSE by WENDELL BERRY JERONIMO'S HOUSE by ELIZABETH BISHOP MENDING THE ADOBE by HAYDEN CARRUTH MY HUT; AFTER TRAN QUANG KHAI by HAYDEN CARRUTH |
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