Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE CRY OF THE OLD HOUSE, by LIZETTE WOODWORTH REESE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE CRY OF THE OLD HOUSE, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Come back!
Last Line: And fall upon my heart!
Subject(s): Homecoming; Houses


COME back!
My little lads, come back!
My little maids, with starched frocks;
My lads, my maids, come back!
The poplar trees are black
Against the keen, lone, throbbing sky;
The tang of the old box
Fills the clear dusk from wall to wall,
And the dews fall.
I watch, I cry:
Leave the rude wharf, the mart;
Come back!
Else shall I break my heart.
Am I forgot;
My days as they were not? --
The warm, sweet, crooning tunes;
The Sunday afternoons,
Wrought but for you;
The larkspurs growing tail,
You wreathed in pink and blue,
Within your prayer-books small;
The cupboards carved both in and out,
With curious, prickly vine,
And smelling far and fine;
The pictures in a row,
Of folk you did not know;
The toys, the games, the shrill, gay rout;
The lanterns, that at hour for bed,
A charmed, but homely red
Went flickering from shed to shed;
The fagots crumbling, spicy, good,
Brought in from the great wood;
The Dark that held you all about;
The grave, white Shapes blown to and fro,
The Wind that would not go? --
Come back, my women and my men,
And take them all again!
Not yet, not yet,
Can you forget --
For you that are a man,
You battle not or reap, you dream nor plan;
And you, so gray of look,
You cannot pluck a rose, or read a book,
Do aught for faith, or fame, or tears,
But I am there with all my years.
Oh, one and all,
When at the evenfall,
Your slim girls sing out on the stair,
Lo, I am there!
When blow the cherry boughs so fair
Athwart your slender town yards far away,
Lo, all at once you have no word to say;
For at your throat a sharp, strange thing --
An old house set in an old spring!
Come back!
Come up the still and wistful lands,
The poplar-haunted lands.
You need not call,
For I shall know,
And light the candles tall,
Set wine and loaf a-row.
Come back!
Unlatch the door,
And fall upon my heart once more.
For I shall comfort you, oh, lad;
Oh, daughter, I shall make you wholly glad!
The wreck, the wrong,
The unavailing throng,
The sting, the smart,
Shall be as they were not,
Forgot, forgot!
Come back,
And fall upon my heart!






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