Breakers and granite / by John Gould Fletcher [electronic text]
About this Item
Title
Breakers and granite / by John Gould Fletcher [electronic text]
Author
Fletcher, John Gould, 1886-1950
Publication
New York: The Macmillan Company
1921
Rights/Permissions
The University of Michigan Library provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes. These materials are in the public domain in the United States. If you have questions about the collection please contact Digital Content & Collections at dlps-help@umich.edu, or if you have concerns about the inclusion of an item in this collection, please contact Library Information Technology at LibraryIT-info@umich.edu.
"Breakers and granite / by John Gould Fletcher [electronic text]." In the digital collection American Verse Project. https://name.umdl.umich.edu/BAP5377.0001.001. University of Michigan Library Digital Collections. Accessed May 2, 2024.
Pages
descriptionPage 32
THE EMPTY HOUSE
Out from my window-sill I leanAnd see a straight, four-storied rowOf houses,
Once long agoThese had their glory; they were builtIn the fair palmy days beforeThe Civil War when all the seasSaw the white sails of Yankee shipsScurrying home with spice and gold.And many of these houses hungProud wisps of crape upon their doorsOn learning that a son had diedAt Chancellorsville or Fredericksburg,Their offering to the Union side.
But man's forever drifting willAgain took hold of him; again,Before some plastering had dried,Society packed up, moved away.Now, would you look upon these houses,
descriptionPage 33
You would-not think they ever had a prime,A grim four-storied serried rowOf rooms to let; at any timeTenants are moving in or out:Families drifting down or struggling stillTo keep their heads up and not down.A tragic busy pettinessHas settled on them allBut one.And in that one, when I came here,A family lived, but with its trunks packed up,And now that family's gone.
Its shutterless, blindless windows let you look insideAnd see the sunlight checkering the bare floorWith patterns from the window framesAll day;Its backyard neatly sweptContains no crammed ash-barrels and no linesFor clothes to flap about on;It does not look by day as if it hadEver a living soul beneath its roof.It marks a gap in the grim line,No house at all, but an untenanted shell.
descriptionPage 34
But when the windows up and down those frontsWith yellow glimmer of gas blaze forth,I know it is the only house that livestn all that long four-storied row.The others are mere shelves, layer on layer,Of warring, separate personalities;A jangle and a tangle of emotions,Without a single meaning running through them.But it, the empty house, has mastered all its secrets;Eyelessly proud,It watches, it is master;It sees the other houses still incessantly learningThe secret it remembers,And which it can repeat the last dim syllable of.
October, 1915.
email
Do you have questions about this content? Need to report a problem?
Please contact us.