Day 7: The Haunted House by George MacDonald.

Since this is a rather lengthy poem that is difficult to read in one sitting and more difficult and time-consuming to type all at once, I will be posting it segments. I encourage you to read the entire poem, as I continue to post, for its spiritual insight and profundity, as well as for its display of poetic skill. I am accompanying the poem with  a quote by MacDonald that I believe alludes to the underlying message or theme of the poem itself and lends it, perhaps, greater significance. 

"It may be an infinitely less evil to murder a man than to refuse to forgive him. The former may be the act of a moment of passion: the latter is the heart's choice." 

The Haunted House (1883)

This must be the very night!

The moon knows it! - and the trees -

They stand straight upright,

Each a sentinel drawn up,

As if they dared not know

Which way the wind might blow!

The very pool, with dead gray eye,

Dully expectant, feels it nigh,

And begins to curdle and freeze!

And the dark night,

With its fringe of light,

Holds the secret in its cup. 

What can it be, to make

The poplars cease to shiver and shake,

And up in the dismal air

Stand straight and stiff as the human hair

When the human soul is dizzy with dread - 

All but those two that strain

Aside in a frenzy of speechless pain,

Though never a wind sends out a breath

To tunnel the foggy rheum of death?

What can it be has power to scare

The full grown moon to the idiot stare

Of a blasted eye in the midnight air?

Something has gone wrong;

A scream will come tearing out ere long!

Still as death,

Although I listen with bated breath!

Yet something is coming, I know - is coming;

With an inward soundless humming ,

Somewhere in me or in the air - 

I cannot tell -  but its foot is there!

Marching on to an unheard drumming,

Something is coming - coming - 

Growing and coming;

And the moon is aware;

Aghast in the air

At the thing that is only coming, 

With an inward soundless humming,

And an unheard spectral drumming!

....to be continued...