Favorite Poems Author:Thomas Hood Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: That mystic tree which breathes to me A sad and solemn sound, That sometimes murmured overhead, And sometimes underground ; Within that shady avenue W... more »here lofty elms abound. THE HAUNTED HOUSE. A ROMANCE. A jolly place," said he, " in times of old, But something ails it now: the place is curst." Hart-Leap Wellt by Wordsworth. PART I. ]OME dreams we have are nothing else but dreams, Unnatural and full of contradictions ; Yet others of our most romantic schemes Are something more than fictions. It might be only on enchanted ground ; It might be merely by a thought's expansion; But in the spirit, or the flesh, I found An old deserted mansion. A residence for woman, child, and man, A dwelling-place, — and yet no habitation ; A house, — but under some prodigious ban Of excommunication. Unhinged the iron gates half open hung, Jarred by the gusty gales of many winters, That from its crumbled pedestal had flung One marble globe in splinters. No dog was at the threshold, great or small ; No pigeon on the roof— no household creature— No cat demurely dozing on the wall, — Not one domestic feature. No human figure stirred, to go or come, No face looked forth from shut or open casement ; No chimney smoked—there was no sign of home From parapet to basement, With shattered panes the grassy court was starred ; The time-worn coping-atone had tumbled after ; And through the ragged roof the sky shone, barred With naked beam and rafter. O'er all there hung a shadow and a fear ; A sense of mystery the spirit daunted, And said, as plain as whisper in the ear, The place is haunted ! The flower grew wild and ratikly as the weed, Roses with thistles struggled for espial, And vagrant plants of parasitic breed Had ov...« less