He stares at me, that man of long ago.

The Haunted:

O ruinous house, within whose corridors

     None but the wicked and the mad go free.

(On the dark stairs they wait, behind the doors

     They crouch, they watch, or creep to follow me.)

Deep in old blood your ominous bricks are red,

     Firm in old bones your walls’ foundations stand,

With dead men’s passions built upon the dead,

     With broken hearts for lime and oaths for sand.

Terrible house, whose horror I have built,

     Sin after sin, unseen, as sand that slips

Telling the time, till now the heaped guilt

     Cries, and the planets circle to eclipse.

You only are the Daunter, you alone

Clutch, till I feel your ivy on the bone.

John Masefield.