Explore "Haunted" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The house is haunted; when the little feet / Go pattering about it in their play, / I tremble lest the little one should meet / The ghosts that haunt the happy night and day.
And yet I think they only come to me; / They come through night of ease and pleasant day / To whisper of the torment that must be / If I some day should be, alas! as they.
And when the child is lying warm asleep, / The ghosts draw back the curtain of my bed, / And past them through the dreadful dark I creep, / Clasp close the child, and so am comforted.
Cling close, cling close, my darling, my delight, / Sad voices on the wind come thin and wild, / Ghosts of poor mothers crying in the night -- / "Father, have pity -- once I had a child! "