Cliff House
When the sun has set in the wintertime
And I'm all alone in this grey old house,
I bolt the shutters and pull the blinds
And set a spark to the candlewax;
The wind runs howling about the eaves,
The shutters chatter, the wind-cock spins,
The breakers clatter and clash below
As my world returns to me, widdershins.
It's then that I hear my mother's voice
So faint at first in the storm outside,
She sighs and moans, and I hear her plead
The length and breadth of the countryside.
Her voice soughs out from the aspens near,
Quivers in ferns and rocks, as if
No year that followed has spent her need
For still she sobs at the edge of the cliff.
Her voice comes whispering under the door
I plug my ears and I cry out loud:
'Leave me, mother, you worked your will,
You earned your fee of a graveyard shroud! '
Still she mutters and moans for him
The shape that darkened our outer door,
Whenever my father was not around
I'd hear his steps on the oaken floor.
Then I'd be sent to my lonely room
And told to play as she locked me in,
Her eyes were bright and her tone was gay
As she breathless, left for her wayward sin.
I heard them laugh in the room above,
The steady beat as they rocked the bed,
And then he'd bellow, and she would scream
As I pulled the covers right over my head.
On winter nights she would pace the floor,
Impatient then, and she'd peer outside,
Men with torches were on the beach
And I'd hear them curse at the rising tide.
But then I'd peek through my window shades
To see them marching up over the hill,
Carrying barrels and flagons of wine
To the village, seen from my window-sill.
She caught me once and she screamed in fright,
'You never, never must look, you see!
Those men are phantoms, they're only ghosts
From wrecks aground on the outer key.'
Then later came the knock at the door,
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poem by David Lewis Paget
Added by Poetry Lover
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