A speaker remembers a man and his house deep in a forest. The house was so dark and muffled by branches that it felt empty; mossy roof tiles blurred into the squirrels’ pathways. The man called it “lonely,” then murmured, “I wish it were lonely”—as though something had intruded on his solitude, or loneliness itself wasn’t enough. When they parted, he turned his wave into a cover for a sigh, laughing it off, and he looked half ghost, half like a beggar’s rag left to bleach on a thornbush for years. Now, a magpie swerving on a beech tip pulls the whole memory back: the speaker at the gate, the man in the house darkness, and that bird, a “weathercock in doubt.” The poem’s mood is quiet and haunted, as if everything—man, house, and the moment of parting—has been worn thin by time, now just a dim reflection shivering on a rippling brook.
House and Man — Summary
ONE hour: as dim he and his house now look As a reflection in a rippling brook, While I remember him; but first, his house. Empty it sounded. It was dark with forest boughs That brushed the walls and made the mossy tiles Part of the squirrels' track. In all those miles Of forest silence and forest murmur, only One house--"Lonely!" he said, "I wish it were lonely"-- Which the trees looked upon from every side, And that was his.
He waved good-bye to hide
A sigh that he converted to a laugh. He seemed to hang rather than stand there, half Ghost-like, half like a beggar's rag, clean wrung And useless on the brier where it has hung Long years a-washing by sun and wind and rain.
But why I call back man and house again Is that now on a beech-tree's tip I see As then I saw--I at the gate, and he In the house darkness,--a magpie veering about, A magpie like a weathercock in doubt.