The Deserted House

Illustration by William Britten accompanying "The Deserted House"

"The Deserted House" is a poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in 1830, as part of his collection Poems, Chiefly Lyrical. The poem is characterised by its reliance on short lines which alternate in rhyme and meter to prevent a felicitous feel. In the poem, Tennyson uses the image of a dark house as a metaphor for a dead body.