Edward Shanks’s speaker visits a ruined house in a green hollow. The door is missing, moss has crept over the roof, and the windows stare like blind eyes. Yet the place feels strangely expectant: its open doorway seems to have waited for the visitors, and the speaker senses that the old walls could offer rest. Around it, nature has taken over—cattle wander into the orchard, untrimmed trees glow with white blossom, and long grasses tangle underfoot. The mood is quiet, eerie, and wistful. There is no horror here, only the ache of something left behind and a life that has moved on. At the end, the visitors sigh and turn away across the hill, leaving the house to its still green emptiness, as if acknowledging that the moment for return has passed.
The Empty House II — Summary
The door was gone, the jambs aslant, awry, The roof grown over with the mosses slow, The windows stared with blank and empty eye, Half the panes gone. The flagstones grinned below In gaping cracks. The foolish cattle came About the orchard, where the unpruned trees Held to the sky white boughs of trembling flame, And long wild grasses brushed about our knees. The dumb house called to us, the black, wide door Stood open for us long and stood in vain : Sighing we guessed those old walls held a store Of rest for us when we should come again
Into the hollow, long and green and still — Then turned away to cross the further hill.