![\"Unoccupied](\"https:\/\/www.tomgrimshaw.com\/tomsblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Unoccupied_House.jpg\")
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One of my favorite poems, this piece was written by Joyce Kilmer.
\nKilmer wrote this poem in 1914 and in April 1917, he enlisted and was deployed to Europe to fight in WWI. He would not survive as he was K.I.A. by a German sniper’s bullet on July 30, 1918 in France. He was 32 years old.<\/p>\n
“Whenever I walk to Suffern along the Erie track
\nI go by a poor old farmhouse with its shingles broken and black.
\nI suppose I\u2019ve passed it a hundred times, but I always stop for a minute
\nAnd look at the house, the tragic house, the house with nobody in it.
\nI never have seen a haunted house, but I hear there are such things;
\nThat they hold the talk of spirits, their mirth and sorrowings.
\nI know this house isn\u2019t haunted, and I wish it were, I do;
\nFor it wouldn\u2019t be so lonely if it had a ghost or two.
\nThis house on the road to Suffern needs a dozen panes of glass,
\nAnd somebody ought to weed the walk and take a scythe to the grass.
\nIt needs new paint and shingles, and the vines should be trimmed and tied;
\nBut what it needs the most of all is some people living inside.
\nIf I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid
\nI\u2019d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade.
\nI\u2019d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be
\nAnd I\u2019d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free.
\nNow, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door,
\nLooks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store.
\nBut there\u2019s nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone
\nFor the lack of something within it that it has never known.
\nBut a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life,
\nThat has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife,
\nA house that has echoed a baby\u2019s laugh and held up his stumbling feet,
\nIs the saddest sight, when it\u2019s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet.
\nSo whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track
\nI never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back,
\nYet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart,
\nFor I can’t help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of my favorite poems, this piece was written by Joyce Kilmer. Kilmer wrote this poem in 1914 and in April 1917, he enlisted and was deployed to Europe to fight in WWI. He would not survive as he was K.I.A. by a German sniper’s bullet on July 30, 1918 in France. He was 32 … <\/p>\n