| Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track |
| I go by a poor old farm-house with its shingles broken and black; |
| I suppose I've passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute |
| And look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it. |
| |
| I've never seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things; |
| That they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings. |
| I know that house isn't haunted and I wish it were, I do, |
| For it wouldn't be so lonely if it had a ghost or two. |
| |
| This house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass, |
| And somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass. |
| It needs new paint and shingles and vines should be trimmed and tied, |
| But what it needs most of all is some people living inside. |
| |
| If I had a bit of money and all my debts were paid, |
| I'd put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. |
| I'd buy that place and fix it up the way that it used to be, |
| And I'd find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free. |
| |
| Now a new home standing empty with staring window and door |
| Looks idle perhaps and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store, |
| But there's nothing mournful about it, it cannot be sad and lone |
| For the lack of something within it that it has never known. |
| |
| But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, |
| That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, |
| A house that has echoed a baby's laugh and helped up his stumbling feet, |
| Is the saddest sight, when it's left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. |
| |
| So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track |
| I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, |
| Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, |
| For I can't help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. |
| |
| Joyce Kilmer. |
