Glassenbury Poem by James P. Roberts

Now "there" is the place for my ghost to haunt.
The very stones of the house seem to speak of age;
ancient whispery secrets of innumerable lives.

Something in that manor house calls to me, some deep
voice in my blood, echoes of English ancestors.
More than seven centuries it has stood

while the rages and tempests of the world pass by
like a blown wind through a thick forest.
Little, I surmise, did Sir Walter Roberts know

when, in 1475, his workmen began piling stone
on stone, brick by brick, beam atop beam,
what future history would transpire here?

Generations lived, generations gone,
the calendar turned by the lives of kings
and queens, time as imperturbable

as the wild fowl that swam in the moat
encircling stately Glassenbury House.
What was it like then, I wonder?To spend

season after season immersed in such life?
To wander through those many rooms?To watch
the glow from the fireplace on wintry nights?

To stroll across the lawn at dawn's light, looking
forward to a journey to London?
To sit in the library reading a book?

Ah, what inconceivable circumstance that I,
forlorn and adrift in the 21st century,
should inherit manse and grounds, goods and chattels

and thus live out the rest of my days
in the same twilight-rent halls as did
Sir Walter on down to Sir Malcolm who died

as bombs were falling on London, almost
within earshot of Glassenbury?I dream of,
if fortune is given to me, to at least travel

there, in company with Erin, who lives in Bampton,
whose artistic sensibilities would be transported
at the sight?

Yes, "here" is the place for my ghost to haunt!