The moon was large across the hills <br />Amid whose fields I wandered lost, <br />And cold her pearl upon the rills— <br />From wave to wave in music tost. <br /> <br />Far in among untended slopes, <br />Vacant of trees, the valley wound. <br />I saw no light to raise my hopes, <br />Nor heard, save of the stream, a sound. <br /> <br />A voiceless region, weird and bare, <br />Whose roads were held by briar and weed, <br />Covert for mouse and aspen hare <br />When the red hawk and owlet feed. <br /> <br />And then, a house I So still it lay! <br />Still as the moon that overhead <br />In silence took her crystal way. <br />A house can die, like men, 'tis said; <br /> <br />And this lay dead and desolate. <br />How tell the pathos of the scene— <br />The hush of things inanimate, <br />The moonlight, sad, immense, serene? <br /> <br />What should I term it, house or tomb? <br />Now all was over. Now the dust <br />Lay thick in each deserted room. <br />The latch was given to the rust. <br /> <br />Sere on the threshold lay the leaves; <br />Hopeless and blank the windows stared, <br />Like eyes of one who sits and grieves <br />In hours remorseful and unshared. <br /> <br />In what near night or distant dawn <br />Were now the dwellers? Lived they still, <br />They who so many times had drawn <br />Before the hearthstone or the sill? <br /> <br />Lived it in other hearts, that home ?— <br />Remembered very far away, <br />Where snowy plains, or whiter foam, <br />Or tropic cities knew the day. <br /> <br />Still hung the frozen moon above <br />The roof where song and tears had been,— <br />Where birth and death and toil and love <br />Had once their ancient way with men. <br /> <br />Chill and forlorn the wintry gleam <br />Of moonlight flooding all the space. <br />The age-long murmur of the stream <br />Made lonelier the hour and place.<br /><br />George Sterling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-abandoned-farm/
