Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882) has appeared often in the Poem of the Day feature in The New York Sun. We’ve run little-known Longfellow and  sentimental Longfellow, and Longfellow on the year’s occasions: Christmas, Winter, and Graduation Day. So why not another, for Halloween?

Yet what Longfellow gives us is not strictly a Halloween poem. “Haunted Houses” is perhaps the clearest poem, certainly the best old American poem, that notices the crowding specters, the quiet dead, the gentle ghosts that surround us: “All houses wherein men have lived and died / Are haunted houses,” the poem begins, and Longfellow looks to see that what “has been” is “visible and clear.” The speaker of the poem lives in a far thicker world than others know: “There are more guests at table than the hosts / Invited.” 

In ten stanzas of pentameter quatrains, rhymed abab, the poem has an easy flow that hides the difficulty of its construction. The dead are with us, and those who look carefully discern that “The spirit-world around this world of sense / Floats like an atmosphere.”

Haunted Houses
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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 door-way, 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, nor 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,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.

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With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems are drawn from the deep traditions of English verse: the great work of the past and the living poets who keep those traditions alive. The goal is always to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.