The Full Text of “Haunted Houses”
1All houses wherein men have lived and died
2Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
3The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
4With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
5We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
6Along the passages they come and go,
7Impalpable impressions on the air,
8A sense of something moving to and fro.
9There are more guests at table than the hosts
10Invited; the illuminated hall
11Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
12As silent as the pictures on the wall.
13The stranger at my fireside cannot see
14The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
15He but perceives what is; while unto me
16All that has been is visible and clear.
17We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
18Owners and occupants of earlier dates
19From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
20And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
21The spirit-world around this world of sense
22Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
23Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
24A vital breath of more ethereal air.
25Our little lives are kept in equipoise
26By opposite attractions and desires;
27The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
28And the more noble instinct that aspires.
29These perturbations, this perpetual jar
30Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
31Come from the influence of an unseen star
32An undiscovered planet in our sky.
33And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
34Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
35Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
36Into the realm of mystery and night,—
37So from the world of spirits there descends
38A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
39O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
40Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
The Full Text of “Haunted Houses”
1All houses wherein men have lived and died
2Are haunted houses. Through the open doors
3The harmless phantoms on their errands glide,
4With feet that make no sound upon the floors.
5We meet them at the door-way, on the stair,
6Along the passages they come and go,
7Impalpable impressions on the air,
8A sense of something moving to and fro.
9There are more guests at table than the hosts
10Invited; the illuminated hall
11Is thronged with quiet, inoffensive ghosts,
12As silent as the pictures on the wall.
13The stranger at my fireside cannot see
14The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear;
15He but perceives what is; while unto me
16All that has been is visible and clear.
17We have no title-deeds to house or lands;
18Owners and occupants of earlier dates
19From graves forgotten stretch their dusty hands,
20And hold in mortmain still their old estates.
21The spirit-world around this world of sense
22Floats like an atmosphere, and everywhere
23Wafts through these earthly mists and vapours dense
24A vital breath of more ethereal air.
25Our little lives are kept in equipoise
26By opposite attractions and desires;
27The struggle of the instinct that enjoys,
28And the more noble instinct that aspires.
29These perturbations, this perpetual jar
30Of earthly wants and aspirations high,
31Come from the influence of an unseen star
32An undiscovered planet in our sky.
33And as the moon from some dark gate of cloud
34Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light,
35Across whose trembling planks our fancies crowd
36Into the realm of mystery and night,—
37So from the world of spirits there descends
38A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
39O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
40Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.
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“Haunted Houses” Introduction
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"Haunted Houses" is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's eerie, mysterious reflection on the relationship between the living and the dead. There's nothing unusual about a haunted house, this poem's speaker suggests: every house in which people have lived and died is haunted by its former residents. The world of the dead, to this speaker, is very real and always nearby; perhaps it even has a greater reality and permanence than the fleeting world of the living does. Longfellow first collected this poem in the 1858 book The Courtship of Miles Standish, and Other Poems.
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“Haunted Houses” Summary
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Every house in which people have lived and died is a haunted house. Harmless ghosts pass through any open door, going about their business with silent footsteps.
We living people might meet ghosts in doorways or on the stairs. Ghosts walk up and down the halls. They're nothing more than faint, ungraspable marks on the air, or a sense of something moving around.
At dinner parties, there are more guests around the table than the hosts invited. The brightly-lit hall is crowded with quiet and harmless ghosts, silent as the pictures on the walls.
A new visitor to my house can't see what I see or hear what I hear. He only notices what's happening in the present, while the past is plainly visible to me.
We, the living, don't really own our homes or our land. The previous owners reach out from their forgotten graves, still claiming possession of the places that were theirs.
The world of the spirits hovers at all times around the tangible world. We can feel a vivifying breath of spiritual air coming to us through all the thick murk of earthly life.
Our brief lives are balanced between opposite forces of attraction: the battle between our urge to enjoy earthly things and our spiritual urge to seek something higher.
The constant struggle between these two sides of our characters is driven by some mysterious, as-yet-unknown heavenly force.
And, just as the moon throws a bridge of light across the ocean from behind a cloud—a bridge across whose wavering surface our imaginations travel into the nighttime world of dream and mystery—
In just this way, the world of spirits throws down a bridge of light that connects to our world, across whose wobbling surface our thoughts travel above a dark chasm.
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“Haunted Houses” Themes
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The Persistence of the Dead
Longfellow's "Haunted Houses" suggests that every house is a haunted house: any house where "men have lived and died," where people have lived out their lives, still hosts their ghosts. The dead, this poem's speaker calmly declares, never really die. The world of the dead and the world of the living are separated only by the thinnest and most transparent of veils.
There's nothing particularly scary about the ghosts the speaker believes in. These "harmless phantoms" merely go about their business in the places where they used to live, walking "along the passages," "through the open doors," and sitting down to the dinner table as usual. They don't mean any bother to the living people with whom they share these spaces. They simply retain the run of their former homes.
In fact, as this speaker reflects, the dead might actually have more power and permanence than the living do! Being alive, after all, is a temporary state; being dead is forever. The living "have no title-deeds to house or lands": they'll only possess these things for a little while, while the dead maintain their right to their "old estates" forever.
The speaker's wandering ghosts thus serve both as a reminder of life's brevity and a strange hint of an eternal existence beyond anything known on earth. Life, in this vision, is in some sense just a preparation for a future residence in the "spirit-world," a place that "floats like an atmosphere" around and through the everyday world we know. In some sense, the world of the dead has a more real and more "vital" life than the world of the living, and the dead reign over this world and the next alike.
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Earthly Life vs. Eternal Life
The "little lives" of all human beings, this speaker feels, are caught up in a "struggle" between two perspectives and two instincts. There's the part of us that "enjoys" the "world of sense"—that is, the part of us that relishes our everyday, earthly lives, the pleasures we can see and hear and smell and touch. And then there's the part of us—the "more noble instinct," to this speaker's mind—that "aspires" toward something beyond what we perceive around us.
That nobler instinct's aspiration, this poem suggests, is toward an afterlife in the "spirit-world," an eternal existence in the land of the dead. The ghosts the speaker observes peacefully wandering the world inspire him with a belief that life doesn't end with death, and that there's something waiting for us beyond the grave. The presence of those ghosts suggests a "bridge of light" that links the "world of spirits" to this one—and it's possible to cross a bridge in either direction!
This idea, in the speaker's mind, also implies that people need to make an active choice to believe in and "aspire[]" toward that afterlife. Those who can't or won't believe in anything beyond the uncontrovertible evidence of their senses, the poem suggests, simply won't be able to cross the "unsteady floor" of the bridge between the worlds. To reach the land of the dead, one must first believe it's there and aspire to get to it.
Such an aspiration, the speaker suggests, might demand that a person value the life to come more than they value life on earth. As this curious poem suggests, that might simply be a good bet: life is short, death is eternal, and whatever might happen after death thus seems far more important than what happens in the "world of sense."
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Haunted Houses”
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Lines 1-4
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.In the first lines of "Haunted Houses," the speaker makes a declaration that might equally come across as matter-of-fact and spooky. There's almost no house, this speaker feels, that is not a haunted house. "All houses wherein men have lived and died" host ghostly visitors.
But that needn't be too terrifying a thought. For the ghosts the speaker imagines are "harmless phantoms," disturbing nothing, silently going about their business "with feet that make no sound upon the floors." They're just doing their "errands," their everyday tasks—maybe versions of the same tasks they did in these houses in life.
The supernatural, in this speaker's vision, is the most ordinary thing in the world, for haunters and the haunted alike. The dead are merely part of the world.
Perhaps it's meaningful, then, that the speaker first imagines these ghosts gliding "through the open doors" of their former (and current) homes. Those literal open doors might hint at a more metaphorical kind of open door: the door between this life and the next. For this poem's speaker, the passage between the one and the other is easy and natural.
Longfellow will unfold his ghostly vision in a steady, measured, tranquil form. The poem is written in quatrains (four-line stanzas) of iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "The harm- | less phan- | toms on | their er- | rands glide") with a simple ABAB rhyme scheme. The unbroken plainness and smoothness of this form suggests the speaker's calm acceptance of the idea that the dead walk among us all the time.
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Lines 5-12
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. -
Lines 13-16
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. -
Lines 17-20
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. -
Lines 21-24
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. -
Lines 25-32
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. -
Lines 33-40
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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“Haunted Houses” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Imagery
Much of this poem's imagery evokes visions and experiences just on the edge of perception. Describing the ghosts he feels to be everywhere, the speaker stresses how faint, immaterial, and "harmless" they are by describing how they don't make an impression on the senses. These ghosts have "feet that make no sound upon the floors"; they're "quiet," "silent as the pictures on the wall." One can't touch them any more than one can hear them: they're just "impalpable impressions on the air." All these moments of imagery focus on what these "inoffensive" ghosts don't have: no sound, no physical being.
That doesn't mean that they don't have a presence. And indeed, one of the poem's creepier moments of imagery arrives when the speaker imagines the former owners of houses "stretch[ing] their dusty hands" out from "graves forgotten." The dustiness of those hands is uncomfortably tangible, reminding readers that these ghosts did once have bodies, and maybe still do have bodies—or rather corpses. (Perhaps the image also works as a memento mori, a reminder that death comes to everyone: ashes to ashes, dust to dust.)
Whether they're harmless or eerie, Longfellow suggests, these ghosts teach us that there's a world beyond our own. The bridge between the two worlds, in his vision, is like the "floating bridge of light" that the moon throws across the sea "from some dark gate of cloud," a bridge that "trembl[es]," "sways and bends" as we try to send our imaginations across it. This lovely vision juxtaposes bold, clear images of light and dark to suggest a glimmering intuition of the other world—and uses images of wavering and swaying to make it clear that such intuitions feel far from concrete.
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Simile
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Metaphor
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Juxtaposition
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"Haunted Houses" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Wherein
- Impalpable
- Thronged
- Mortmain
- Vital
- Ethereal
- Equipoise
- Perturbations
- Perpetual jar
- Fancies
- Abyss
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In which.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Haunted Houses”
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Form
"Haunted Houses" uses a steady form: ten quatrains (or four-line stanzas) written in iambic pentameter (lines of five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm, as in "All hous- | es where- | in men | have lived | and died") with an ABAB rhyme scheme.
This simple and consistent pattern supports the poem's soft, solemn, mysterious tone. There are no abrupt changes in meter or surprising rhymes here; this isn't the kind of ghost story that catches you off guard with a jump scare. The poem moves along as quietly as the "harmless phantoms" that the speaker pictures gliding through "all houses wherein men have lived and died."
The poem's traditional form fits right in with the rest of Longfellow's work. A wildly popular poet during his lifetime, Longfellow was loved, not for being an innovator, but for being a talented traditionalist.
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Meter
"Haunted Houses" is written in iambic pentameter. That means that each line uses five iambs, metrical feet with a da-DUM rhythm. Here's how that sounds in lines 29-30:
These per- | turba- | tions, this | perpet- | ual jar
Of earth- | ly wants | and asp- | ira- | tions high,This is one of the most common meters in English-language poetry. (And that's characteristic: Longfellow was generally not a big experimenter, sticking to poetic forms as comfortably well-worn as an old jacket.)
In this particular poem, a pulsing, heartbeat-like rhythm suits the speaker's tone as he muses on the calm, ordinary presence of ghosts among us (and on what they might show us about the "world of spirits" beyond our normal perception).
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Rhyme Scheme
This poem's simple rhyme scheme runs like this:
ABAB
Consistent all the way through, this musical and predictable pattern fits in with the poem's general tone. There's something curiously un-spooky about the way the speaker depicts hauntings here: while there may be "more guests at table than the hosts / Invited," those guests are mere "harmless phantoms," shadows of the past with no animus against the present. Still, according to this speaker, these ghosts are ever-present, and that might be just the tiniest bit creepy, even if they mean no harm. The poem's rhymes, ticking along like a clock, help to maintain a still and steady mood, balanced between eerieness and utter calm.
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“Haunted Houses” Speaker
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The poem's speaker is a person who combines a down-to-earth matter-of-factness with an airy mysticism. To this speaker, ghosts are nothing to be afraid of; they're also nothing to be surprised by. Every house is a haunted house if someone has "lived and died" in it, this speaker feels: the shades of the dead simply remain where they were in life, "harmless" and "inoffensive," going about their business. (He notes, however, that one might need a certain sensitivity to perceive these visitors: not everyone can "see / The forms I see, nor hear the sounds I hear," he observes.)
But while this speaker accepts the thought of dead housemates with complete calm, he also feels that the presence of the dead is like a beckoning finger, inviting the living to look past their small and fleeting "earthly wants" and toward the "spirit-world," the world beyond. In one sense, for this speaker, the extraordinary is ordinary. In another sense, the ordinary is extraordinary. The "spirit-world [...] Floats like an atmosphere" around us at all times.
The fact that ghosts walk the world, the speaker concludes, should invite people to value their "more noble instinct," the part of them that "aspires" toward a life beyond this one. What he can glimpse of the land of the spirits encourages him to seek something grander than mere earthly satisfaction.
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“Haunted Houses” Setting
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In "Haunted Houses," Longfellow suggests that any house might do as the setting for a ghost story. As he puts it in the poem's very first lines, "All houses wherein men have lived and died / Are haunted houses."
But when the speaker describes ghostly "guests at table" and spirits keeping him company by the "fireside," readers might be inclined to picture the poem taking place in a house from around the time and place Longfellow published this poem: the United States of the 1850s. For a modern-day reader, maybe this helps to make Longfellow's point! Plenty of recent tales of ghosts have been set in big, rambling 19th-century houses—houses that would have been brand new to Longfellow and that seem inherently ghostly now, haunted by the past. (Of course, hauntings were also a major literary theme and topic of conversation among Longfellow's contemporaries.)
In another sense, of course, this poem could take place anywhere at all. One of Longfellow's big ideas here is that the "spirit world [...] Floats like an atmosphere" within and throughout the everyday "world of sense." Wherever one goes, there the spirits are: the whole world is a haunted house.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Haunted Houses”
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Literary Context
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) was arguably the most famous American poet of his century, a celebrity writer with a wide audience on both sides of the Atlantic. He was the preeminent member of a literary circle known as the Fireside Poets, a crew of American poets whose work helped popularize both New England literature and American literature more generally.
It's easy to see why one might call Longfellow a "fireside poet." His most famous poems are stories in verse, just the thing for reciting over one's evening cocoa: the "midnight ride of Paul Revere," the wreck of the Hesperus, the tale of Hiawatha. In galumphing, energetic verse, Longfellow gave these true-life stories a romantic (and often swashbucklingly melodramatic) cast.
Alongside being a storyteller, Longfellow was also a learned scholar and translator, the first American to translate all of Dante's Divine Comedy—Inferno, Purgatorio, and even the notoriously difficult Paradiso—into English. Many critics also consider Longfellow an American Romantic, an inheritor of earlier 19th-century English Romantic poets like William Wordsworth, John Keats, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge. The Romantics were known for, among other things, their reflections on the bridges between the realm of the imagination and the everyday world—a theme that Longfellow thoughtfully picks up here.
Historical Context
This poem's confidence that ghosts walk among us might be inflected by Spiritualism, a quasi-religious movement that gained huge momentum during Longfellow's time and would remain popular well into the 20th century. The Spiritualists believed that the dead could communicate with the living, that the spirit world was a mere breath away from the everyday. Believers venerated talented mediums (often "sensitive" young women) and gathered to hold seances, reaching out to the world beyond. (Longfellow and his family may have done the same: they certainly had a planchette, a device used for taking dictation from the spirits.)
While such beliefs might sound mystical, they were also inflected with a very 19th-century belief in scientific empiricism and discovery. Some Spiritualists believed that humanity was close to unraveling the mystery of life after death in testable and provable ways. (This belief, alas, led to a lot of charlatanism that preyed on grieving people: for instance, faked spirit photography.)
But this poem might also simply reflect on the persistence of memory and the permanence of the past. Perhaps the thought that the dead never really leave was particularly comforting to a poet who lost not one, but two young wives. Longfellow's first wife, Mary, died of complications following a miscarriage; his second, Frances, died of burns after an awful accident in which her dress caught fire.
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More “Haunted Houses” Resources
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External Resources
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A Brief Biography — Read a short overview of Longfellow's life via Poets.org.
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Portraits of Longfellow — See some portraits of the poet.
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The Fireside Poets — Read a short introduction to the Fireside Poets, a group of popular 19th-century American poets including Longfellow.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of the poem.
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The Longfellow Society — Visit the website of a society dedicated to Longfellow to learn more about his life and work.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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