The Empty House

There is an empty house

Beyond the lane,

And there no cat or mouse

Will come again;

The family is scattered far and wide

That there in by-gone years did reside.

 

Here once the children played,

The father worked;

The mother bonnags made

And no job shirked.

But now the only children here-abouts

Throw at it stones or pass with jeering shouts.

 

It seems as if it waits

The turn of key,

To nurse within its gates

A family.

But no-one ever comes to warm its bones;

It waits in vain, a yearning in its stones.

 

More years will pass it by ;

It will decay.

Its roof will be the sky,

Its light the day.

Then who but I shed for it a tear?

I, too, will moulder with another year.

 

Mona’s Herald     18.6.63