A Car-Boot Gem: Henry Longfellow

Spring is a great time for strolling around markets, car boot sales and junk shops. With the warmer weather the need for a quick dash to the local hostelry for a winter warmer is less urgent so last weekend I found myself drifting around the massive car boot sale in Ascot, filled with hope and sunshine.

I came upon a really scrappy old folio with torn and worn corners on its cardboard cover; it was filled with many pages of sheet music which was in itself unremarkable, but hidden amongst all the dross was a page of poetry from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. I was ecstatic because it would have been written about 150 years ago and describes many of the moments which I tried to capture in my book Catacombs of the Damned. This is it:

                                                 Haunted Houses.

All houses wherein men have lived and died

Are haunted houses. Through the open doors

The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,

With feet that make no sound upon the floors.

We meet them at the doorway, on the stair,

Along the passages they come and go,

Impalpable impressions on the air,

A sense of something moving to and fro.

There are more guests at table than the hosts

Invited; the illuminated hall

Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,

As silent as the pictures on the wall.

The stranger at my fireside cannot see

The forms I see, not hear the sounds I hear;

He but perceives what is; while unto me

All that has been is visible and clear.

We have no title-deeds to house or lands;

Owners and occupants of earlier dates

From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,

And hold in mortmain still their old estates.

The spirit-world around this world of sense

Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere

Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense

A vital breath of more ethereal air.

Our little lives are kept in equipoise

By opposite attractions and desires;

The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,

And the more noble instinct that aspires.

These perturbations, this perpetual jar

Of earthly wants and aspirations high,

Come from the influence of an unseen star

An undiscovered planet in our sky.

And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud

Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,

Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd

Into the realm of mystery and night,....

So from the world of spirits there descends

A bridge of light, connecting it with this,

O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,

Wonder our thoughts above the dark abyss.

            Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

       When discovering something like this, I can never decide whether it is an inspiration for me to write better, or whether it simply tells me the targets are so high as to be unattainable. “From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands and hold in mortmain still their old estates”- just brilliant.

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