The House on the Hill
The poem depicts an abandoned House on a hill, shut, silent, broken, and decayed after all its former inhabitants have gone away. Bleak winds pass through its ruined gray walls, and no one remains to praise or condemn those who once lived there. The speaker wonders why people still linger around the sunken sill, imagining the vanished residents, when such fancy is futile. The House stands as a place of ruin and absence, offering no answer beyond the fact that its people are gone.
By Edwin Arlington Robinson · First published 1897 · Genre: Lyric Poetry, Villanelle, Elegy · 128 words
First lines
THEY are all gone away, / The House is shut and still, / There is nothing more to say.
Through broken walls and gray
The winds blow bleak and shrill:
They are all gone away.
What this Textopian page supports
The House on the Hill is listed on Textopian as a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, dated 1897 CE.
This source record anchors work identity, reading entry points, and catalog context for checking claims about the work.
- Work type: Poem
- Author: Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Date: 1897 CE
- Language: English
- Genres: Lyric Poetry, Villanelle, Elegy, Symbolist Poetry, Gothic Poetry
- Length: 128 words
- Structure: 1 section, 15 paragraphs
- Reading fit: Very Easy (5th Grade or below)
Good citation fit
- Work identity for The House on the Hill by Edwin Arlington Robinson
- Canonical title URL and first readable passage URL
- Genre and topic classification from the Textopian catalog
- Readability and classroom-planning context
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Similar titles
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Genres
- Lyric Poetry — The work is a short, highly musical poem centered on a single emotional meditation, using repetition, imagery, and compressed expression rather than narrative development.
- Villanelle — Its nineteen-line structure, alternating refrains ('They are all gone away' and 'There is nothing more to say'), and recurring rhyme pattern identify it as a villanelle.
- Elegy — The poem mourns absent, unnamed former inhabitants and treats the abandoned house as a site of loss, memory, and irreversible departure.
- Symbolist Poetry — The ruined house functions symbolically as more than a physical setting: it evokes mortality, vanished lives, failed remembrance, and the emptiness left by time.
Tags
poetry · lyric poem · abandonment · desolation · decay · loss · memory · nostalgia · melancholy · mortality · isolation · ruins