My Life

To me my life seems as a haunted house,
The ways and passages whereof are dumb;
Up whose decaying stair no footsteps come;
Lo, this the hall hung with sere laurel boughs,
Where long years back came victors to carouse.
But none of all that company went home;
For scarce their lips had quaffed the bright wine's foam,
When sudden Death brake dank upon their brows.

Here in this lonely, ruined house I dwell,
While unseen fingers toll the chapel bell;
Sometimes the arras rustles, and I see
A half-veiled figure through the twilight steal,
Which, when I follow, pauses suddenly
Before the door whereon is set a seal.