“I hear the piano playing -
  Just as a ghost might play.”
“ - O, but what are you saying?
  There’s no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
  Years past it went amiss.”
“ - I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:
    A strange house, this!
“I catch some undertone here,
  From some one out of sight.”
“ - Impossible; we are alone here,
  And shall be through the night.”
“ - The parlour-door - what stirred it?”
  “ - No one: no soul’s in range.”
“ - But, anyhow, I heard it,
    And it seems strange!
“Seek my own room I cannot -
  A figure is on the stair!”
“ - What figure? Nay, I scan not
  Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
  And that’s its shade by the moon.”
“ - Well, all is strange! I am craving
    Strength to leave soon.”
“ - Ah, maybe you’ve some vision
  Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
  Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they’ve hinted
  It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
    Their dreams on its walls?
“They were - I think ‘twas told me -
  Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
  With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
  But we - we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
    Knew joy, or despair.”
