Haunted Houses

There are more guests at table than the hosts
Invited; the illuminated hall
Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see
The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
He but perceives what is; while unto me
All that has been is visible and clear.

 

 

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
Owners and occupants of earlier dates
From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

Extract from "Haunted Houses" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

 

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

Consolation

He is not dead, this friend – not dead,
But in the path we mortals tread
Got some few trifling steps ahead
And nearer to the end;
So that you too, once past the bend,
Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend
You fancy dead.

Extract from "Consolation" by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) 

To you, because I care.

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

Jenny Kiss'd Me

Jenny kiss’d me when we met,

Jumping from the chair she sat in;

Time, you thief, who love to get

Sweets into your list, put that in!

Say I’m weary, say I’m sad,

Say that health and wealth have miss’d me,

Say I’m growing old, but add,

Jenny kiss’d me. 

 

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.

An Angel in The House

How sweet it were, if without feeble fright,
Or dying of the dreadful beauteous sight,
An angel came to us, and we could bear
To see him issue from the silent air
At evening in our room, and bend on ours
His divine eyes, and bring us from his bowers
News of dear friends, and children who have never
Been dead indeed,--as we shall know forever. 

 

Alas! we think not what we daily see
About our hearths,--angels that are to be,
Or may be if they will, and we prepare
Their souls and ours to meet in happy air;--
A child, a friend, a wife whose soft heart sings
In unison with ours, breeding its future wings.

James Henry Leigh Hunt (1784-1859)

© 2023  José Pereira Torrejón. All rights reserved. No part of the content of this blog may be distributed, published or reproduced without prior authorization from the author.