Goody Grunsell's House

A WEARY old face, beneath a black mutch;
Like a flame in a cavern her eye,
Betwixt craggy forehead and cheek-bone high:
Her long, lean fingers hurried to clutch
A something concealed in her rusty cloak,
As a step on the turf the stillness broke;
While a sound — was it curse or sigh? —
Smote the ear of the passer-by.

A dreary old house, on a headland slope,
Against the gray of the sea.
Where garden and orchard used to be,
Witch-grass and nettle and rag-weed grope, —
Paupers that eat the earth’s riches out, —
Nightshade and henbane are lurking about,
Like demons that enter in
When a soul has run waste to sin.

The house looked wretched and woe-begone;
Its desolate windows wept
With a dew that forever dripped and crept
From the moss-grown eaves; and ever anon
Some idle wind, with a passing slap,
Made rickety shutter or shingle flap
As who with a jeer should say,
“ Why does the old crone stay ? ”

Goody Grunsell’s house — it was all her own;
There was no one living to chide,
Though she tore every rib from its skeleton side
To kindle a fire when she sat alone
With the ghosts that had leave to go out and in,
Through crevice and rent, to the endless din
Of waves that wild ditties droned, —
Of winds that muttered and moaned.

And this was the only booty she hid
Under her threadbare cloak, —
A strip of worn and weather-stained oak;
Then into her lonesome hearth she slid:
And, inch by inch, as the cold years sped,
She was burning the old house over her head;
Why not — when each separate room
Held more than a lifetime’s gloom ?

Goody Grunsell’s house — not a memory glad
Illumined bare ceiling or wall;
But cruel shadows would sometimes fall
On the floor; and faces eerie and sad
At dusk would peer in at the broken pane,
While ghostly steps pattered through the rain,
Sending the blood with a start
To her empty, shriveled heart.

For she had not been a forbearing wife,
Nor a loyal husband’s mate;
The twain had been one but in fear and hate,
And the horror of that inverted life
Had not spent itself on their souls alone:
From the bitter root evil buds had blown;
There were births that blighted grew,
And died, — and no gladness knew.

The house unto nobody home had been,
But a lair of pain and shame:
Could any its withered mistress blame,
Who sought from its embers a spark to win,
A warmth for the body, to soul refused?
Such questioning ran through her thoughts confused,
As she slipped with her spoil from sight.
Could the dead assert their right ?

The splintered board, like a dagger’s blade,
Goody Grunsell cowering hid,
As if the house had a voice that chid,
When wound after wound in its side she made;
As if the wraiths of her children cried
From their graves, to denounce her a homicide;
While the sea, up the weedy path,
Groaned, spuming in wordless wrath.

The house, with its pitiful, haunted look, —
Old Goody, more piteous still,
Angry and sad, as the night fell chill, —
They are pictures out of a long-lost book.
But the windows of many a human face
Show tenants that burn their own dwelling-place;
And spectre and fiend will roam
Through the heart which is not love’s home.