Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HOUSE DESOLATE, by ELINOR SWEETMAN


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HOUSE DESOLATE, by                    
First Line: Roof of our fathers, beloved, behold we return to thee
Last Line: Thou hast forgotten us!


ROOF of our fathers, beloved, behold we return to thee
Joyful, remembering our mutual anguish at parting:
How thy doors drawn apart like the lips of a desolate woman,
Dumb, let us forth; how thy windows appealed to the heavens:
'Restore them, O God!' and thy stairway, with hollows introdden
By the feet of our fathers at rest and their burden of honours,
Clung to our feet; yea the stones in the walls cried: 'Stay with us!'
Stones many-witnessing, worn as the bed of a stream is
Worn with the life of the waters it holds in its bosom;
Stones that have cradled us, stones that shall coffin us, hail to ye!

Mother unchilded, our Niobe, lo! we return to thee!
Daughter of sorrows, have comfort, behold we return to thee!
Where is thy welcome?
What is this thing? -- art thou deaf, art thou blind, O our Mother?
Behold, our hounds in thy halls, and our doves in thy laurel
Call to thee, cry as of yore, and in laughter and music
Voices of children ascend with thy chorister-starlings;
Where is thine answer of old? -- yea, what hath gone out of thee!
What lieth dead in thee? -- how art thou altered and alien!
We are not changed, we are loyal; as waves of an ocean
Yearn to the shore, so we yearn to thee, home of our fathers;
Now we behold thee, thou seemest not shrunken or dwindled,
Shell of our race, and its tomb, we revere thee for ever!

But thou, O desired and belov'd -- O thou bourne of our wishes! --
Lone hast thou stood over-long, over-long hast thou waited,
Sealed are thy senses of stone, and thy being dishumanised
Owns us no more, or at best with a dim recognition;
As the hound by his masters forsaken, in piteous expectancy
Waiteth the voice and the touch that are music and balm to him,
Broken by loneliness waiteth -- they in their season
Eager of welcome return through the years, and caress him.
Lo! he is dulled and confused: with a blunted remembrance
Vaguely he greets them at first, and remaineth despondent.
Thus we return to thee, roof of our fathers, beloved,
Eager of welcome, rejoicing; -- but thou, O most faithful,
Thou hast forgotten us!





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