The south-wind strengthens to a gale, <br />Across the moon the clouds fly fast, <br />The house is smitten as with a flail, <br />The chimney shudders to the blast. <br /> <br />On such a night, when Air has loosed <br />Its guardian grasp on blood and brain, <br />Old terrors then of god or ghost <br />Creep from their caves to life again; <br /> <br />And Reason kens he herits in <br />A haunted house. Tenants unknown <br />Assert their squalid lease of sin <br />With earlier title than his own. <br /> <br />Unbodied presences, the packed <br />Pollution and remorse of Time, <br />Slipped from oblivion re-enact <br />The horrors of unhousehold crime. <br /> <br />Some men would quell the thing with prayer <br />Whose sightless footsteps pad the floor, <br />Whose fearful trespass mounts the stair <br />Or burst the locked forbidden door. <br /> <br />Some have seen corpses long interred <br />Escape from hallowing control, <br />Pale charnel forms - nay even have heard <br />The shrilling of a troubled soul, <br /> <br />That wanders till the dawn has crossed <br />The dolorous dark, or Earth has wound <br />Closer her storm-spread cloak, and thrust <br />The baleful phantoms underground.<br /><br />Robert Seymour Bridges<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/low-barometer/
