If I had a lot of money and all my debts were paid I’d put a gang of men to work with brush and saw and spade. I’d buy that place and fix it up the way it used to be And I’d find some people who wanted a home and give it to them free. Now, a new house standing empty, with staring window and door, Looks idle, perhaps, and foolish, like a hat on its block in the store. But there’s nothing mournful about it; it cannot be sad and lone For the lack of something within it that it has never known. But a house that has done what a house should do, a house that has sheltered life, That has put its loving wooden arms around a man and his wife, A house that has echoed a baby’s laugh and held up his stumbling feet, Is the saddest sight, when it’s left alone, that ever your eyes could meet. So whenever I go to Suffern along the Erie track I never go by the empty house without stopping and looking back, Yet it hurts me to look at the crumbling roof and the shutters fallen apart, For I can’t help thinking the poor old house is a house with a broken heart. DAVE LILLY There’s a brook on the side of Greylock that used to be full of trout, But there’s nothing there now but minnows; they say it is all fished out. I fished there many a Summer day some twenty years ago, And I never quit without getting a mess of a dozen, or so. There was a man, Dave Lilly, who lived on the North Adams road, And he spent all his time fishing, while his neighbors reaped and sowed. He was the luckiest fisherman in the Berkshire hills, I think. And when he didn’t go fishing he’d sit in the tavern and drink. Well, Dave is dead and buried and nobody cares very much; They have no use in Greylock for drunkards and loafers and such. But I always liked Dave Lilly, he was pleasant as you could wish; He was shiftless and good-for-nothing, but he certainly could fish. The other night I was walking up the hill from Williamstown And I came to the brook I mentioned, and I stopped on the bridge and sat down. I looked at the blackened water with its little flecks of white And I heard it ripple and whisper in the still of the Summer night. And after I’d been there a minute it seemed to me I could feel The presence of someone near me, and I heard the hum of a reel. And the water was churned and broken, and something was brought to land By a twist and flirt of a shadowy rod in a deft and shadowy hand. I scrambled down to the brookside and hunted all about; There wasn’t a sign of a fisherman; there wasn’t a sign of a trout. But I heard somebody chuckle behind the hollow oak And I got a whiff of tobacco like Lilly used to smoke.