Analysis of The Haunted House
Thomas Hood 1799 (London) – 1845 (London)
Oh, very gloomy is the house of woe,
Where tears are falling while the bell is knelling,
With all the dark solemnities that show
That Death is in the dwelling!
Oh, very, very dreary is the room
Where Love, domestic Love, no longer nestles,
But smitten by the common stroke of doom,
The corpse lies on the trestles!
But house of woe, and hearse, and sable pall,
The narrow home of the departed mortal,
Ne’er looked so gloomy as that Ghostly Hall,
With its deserted portal!
The centipede along the threshold crept,
The cobweb hung across in mazy tangle,
And in its winding sheet the maggot slept
At every nook and angle.
The keyhole lodged the earwig and her brood,
The emmets of the steps has old possession,
And marched in search of their diurnal food
In undisturbed procession.
As undisturbed as the prehensile cell
Of moth or maggot, or the spider’s tissue,
For never foot upon that threshold fell,
To enter or to issue.
O’er all there hung the shadow of a fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted.
Howbeit, the door I pushed—or so I dreamed--
Which slowly, slowly gaped, the hinges creaking
With such a rusty eloquence, it seemed
That Time himself was speaking.
But Time was dumb within that mansion old,
Or left his tale to the heraldic banners
That hung from the corroded walls, and told
Of former men and manners.
Those tattered flags, that with the opened door,
Seemed the old wave of battle to remember,
While fallen fragments danced upon the floor
Like dead leaves in December.
The startled bats flew out, bird after bird,
The screech-owl overhead began to flutter,
And seemed to mock the cry that she had heard
Some dying victim utter!
A shriek that echoed from the joisted roof,
And up the stair, and further still and further,
Till in some ringing chamber far aloof
In ceased its tale of murther!
Meanwhile the rusty armor rattled round,
The banner shuddered, and the ragged streamer;
All things the horrid tenor of the sound
Acknowledged with a tremor.
The antlers where the helmet hung, and belt,
Stirred as the tempest stirs the forest branches,
Or as the stag had trembled when he felt
The bloodhound at his haunches.
The window jingled in its crumbled frame,
And through its many gaps of destitution
Dolorous moans and hollow sighings came,
Like those of dissolution.
The wood-louse dropped, and rolled into a ball,
Touched by some impulse occult or mechanic;
And nameless beetles ran along the wall
In universal panic.
The subtle spider, that, from overhead,
Hung like a spy on human guilt and error,
Suddenly turned, and up its slender thread
Ran with a nimble terror.
The very stains and fractures on the wall,
Assuming features solemn and terrific,
Hinted some tragedy of that old hall,
Locked up in hieroglyphic.
Some tale that might, perchance, have solved the doubt,
Wherefore, among those flags so dull and livid,
The banner of the bloody hand shone out
So ominously vivid.
Some key to that inscrutable appeal
Which made the very frame of Nature quiver,
And every thrilling nerve and fiber feel
So ague-like a shiver.
For over all there hung a cloud of fear,
A sense of mystery the spirit daunted,
And said, as plain as whisper in the ear,
The place is haunted!
Prophetic hints that filled the soul with dread,
But through one gloomy entrance pointing mostly,
The while some secret inspiration said,
“That chamber is the ghostly!”
Across the door no gossamer festoon
Swung pendulous, --no web, no dusty fringes,
No silky chrysalis or white cocoon,
About its nooks and hinges.
The spider shunned the interdicted room,
The moth, the beetle, and the fly were banished,
And when the sunbeam fell athwart the gloom,
The very midge had vanished.
One lonely ray that glanced upon a bed,
As if with awful aim direct and certain,
To show the Bloody Hand, in burning red,
Embroidered on the curtain.
Scheme | abab cdcd xefe gege hihi jkjk lMNO pbpb qrqr stst utut vtvl wtwt xxxd yiyi fbfb ztzt fbfb 1 m1 o 2 t2 T lmno z3 z3 4 5 4 5 c6 c6 zizi |
---|---|
Poetic Form | Quatrain (88%) |
Metre | 1101010111 1111010111 1101111 1110010 1101010101 11010111010 1101010111 011101 1111010101 01011001010 1111011101 1101010 01001011 011010110 0011010101 11001010 01101001 0110111010 0101110101 001010 1011011 1111010101 110101111 1101110 111101101 01110001010 0111110001 01110 101111111 11010101010 1101010011 1101110 1111011101 11111001010 1110010101 1101010 1101110101 10111101010 1101010101 1110010 0101111101 01110101110 0111011111 1101010 011101011 01010101010 1011010101 011111 101010101 01010001010 1101010101 0101010 0101010101 11010101010 1101110111 010111 010101101 0111011100 1101011 111010 0111010101 11110011010 0101010101 001010 0101011101 11011101010 1001011101 1101010 0101010101 01010100010 1011001111 110010 1111011101 1011111010 0101010111 1100010 1111010001 11010111010 01001010101 111010 1101110111 01110001010 0111110001 01110 0101110111 11110101010 011100101 1101010 010111001 11001111010 1101001101 0111010 010101001 01010001010 010110101 0101110 1101110101 11110101010 1101010101 0101010 |
Closest metre | Iambic pentameter |
Characters | 4,098 |
Words | 682 |
Sentences | 26 |
Stanzas | 25 |
Stanza Lengths | 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4, 4 |
Lines Amount | 100 |
Letters per line (avg) | 31 |
Words per line (avg) | 7 |
Letters per stanza (avg) | 123 |
Words per stanza (avg) | 27 |
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on April 26, 2023
- 3:24 min read
- 417 Views
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"The Haunted House" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 29 Apr. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem-analysis/36693/the-haunted-house>.
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