The Poetry Corner

Tenants

By Wilfrid Wilson Gibson

Suddenly, out of dark and leafy ways, We came upon the little house asleep In cold blind stillness, shadowless and deep, In the white magic of the full moon-blaze. Strangers without the gate, we stood agaze, Fearful to break that quiet, and to creep Into the home that had been ours to keep Through a long year of happy nights and days. So unfamiliar in the white moon-gleam, So old and ghostly like a house of dream It seemed, that over us there stole the dread That even as we watched it, side by side, The ghosts of lovers, who had lived and died Within its walls, were sleeping in our bed.