A Room Suitable for a Tattered Ghost

Abandoned Living Room - House Location Unknown

From Too Much Dwelling

on What Has Been

James Hart

On a line by Robert Frost

From too much dwelling on what has been,

we may rebuild a house from a single stone,

or recall its mistress long after she’s gone,

how she worked keeping the windows clean,

and by dwelling within forgotten rooms,

we may hear dead mice tunneling walls,

or smelling the wallpaper’s dolor, see a pall

arise where she sweeps her molting broom.

Either industry rewards our simple cares:

recalling a life that passed within a home,

or remember her love for sweeping floors

works as well as memory cleansing time,

and becomes our going out and coming in

by building a dwelling on what has been.

(From an unpublished manuscript entitled

In the Countryside of the Dead)

Robert Frost:
"Their murmur more like the sigh we sigh
From too much dwelling on what has been."

"The Need of Being Versed in Country Things"

by Robert Frost, from The Collected Poems.

1906 House - Location Unknown