Lost manor where I walk continually A ghost, though yet in woman's flesh and blood. Up your broad stairs mounting with outspread fingers And gliding steadfast down your corridors I come by nightly custom to this room, And even on sultry afternoons I come Drawn by a thread of time-sunk memory. Empty, unless for a huge bed of state Shrouded with rusty curtains drooped awry (A puppet theatre where malignant fancy Peoples the wings with fear.) At my right hand A raveled bell-pull hangs in readiness To summon me from attic glooms above Service of elder ghosts; here, at my left, A sullen pier-glass, cracked from side to side, Scorns to the present the face (as do new mirrors) With a lying flush, but it shows melancholy And pale, as faces grow that look in mirrors. Is there no life, nothing but the thin shadow And blank foreboding, never a wainscot rat Rasping a crust? Or the window-pane No fly, no bluebottle, no starveling spider? The windows frame a prospect of cold skies Half-merged with sea, as at the first creation -- Abstract, confusing welter. Face about, Peer rather in the glass once more, take note Of self, the grey lips and the long hair disheveled, Sleep-staring eyes. Ah, mirror, for Christ's love Give me one token that there still abides Remote -- beyond this island mystery, So be it only this side Hope, somewhere, In streams, on sun-warm mountain pasturage -- True life, natural breath; not this phantasma. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...A WINTER'S NIGHT by ROBERT FROST DOMESDAY BOOK: DR. TRACE TO THE CORONER by EDGAR LEE MASTERS SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY: EUGENIA TODD by EDGAR LEE MASTERS GARDEN WIRELESS by CARL SANDBURG |