By Harry Kemp (1883-1960)
There is nothing living there.
But at night the foot of Something
Goes up and down the stair.
There’s a fence of rusted pickets;
In the yard the tangled grass
Clutches at the feet in warning:
Every pane’s a shattered glass;
On a plot where burst a fountain
Prone a marble naiad lies
Staring up in sun or starshine
With unseeing, soulless eyes;
Ancient weeds have choked the flowers
That in patterned order stood;
Step by step wit sure encroachment,
Marches in the gloomy wood….
It is vacant in the daylight,
There is nothing living there;
For at night the foot of SOMETHING
Goes up and down the stair.
From Chanteys and Ballads, 1920
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