Here is the house,
Empty and lone;
Where is the home now of that which is gone?
Out in the regions of boundless, blank space,
Floating and floating, no shape and no place?
Or did it gather its wealth, and remove
To the home up above?
All's still in the house!
Gone from its house,
And none knoweth where;
Unseen it passed the invisible air.
Nothing to mark that a dweller is reft
Out of our midst, but the house that is left.
God grant the soul that hath wandered away
Be not homeless today--
But here is the house.
Out of its house!
How strange it must be--
Now to itself the great mystery,
The intangible thing that's like nothing we know,
That we should shudder at, come to us so!
Here with us yesterday, gone beyond touch;
How strange to be such--
And away from its house.
Ah, the desolate house!
And a voice cometh low,
Murmuring, some day, thou too must go.
Ah, me! thrust forth to the world outside,
Shall I not find it dreary and wide?
This is grown to be home. From the near and the known
I must go forth alone
Out of this house!
Low as it is,
From its windows I bound
All I can measure of what is beyond.
Here has been written all of my past;
It is dear by memories, first and last;
Old as life to me! What shall I do
When I must go too
Out of my house?
Can I miss the new house
In the city impearled?
Dreadful abysses part world from world,
Valleys of nothingness twixt hight and hight,
Terrible blanks in the great infinite.
Room for worlds to go down; where a soul might be tossed
With its anchorage lost,
So far from its house!
Into thy house,
Lord, take us straight,
Lest we be left in the darkness to wait;
Lest we be lost in realms without sun,
And wander forever where mansion is none
Crying without, Let us in! Let us in!
When the feast shall begin
And the door shall be shut.
