There is ruin and decay
In the House on the Hill:
They are all gone away,
There is nothing more to say.

These lines come from Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “The House on the Hill,” first published in his early collection *The Children of the Night* (1897). Robinson (1869–1935) is known for spare, elegiac portraits of New England life—often depicting decline, isolation, and the quiet collapse of once-stable families or communities. Written during a period when Robinson was shaping his characteristic voice, the poem presents a speaker addressing an implied listener about an abandoned house and the vanished people who once animated it. The refrain-like simplicity and finality reflect Robinson’s broader preoccupation with loss and the irreversibility of time.

The stanza compresses a whole history of disappearance into blunt, almost resigned statements. “Ruin and decay” describe not only a physical structure but also the erosion of memory and social continuity; the “House on the Hill” becomes a symbol of a life or lineage that has ended. The line “They are all gone away” suggests death, dispersal, or estrangement, while “There is nothing more to say” conveys emotional exhaustion and the limits of language in the face of irreversible loss. Robinson’s plain diction heightens the bleakness: the speaker does not dramatize grief so much as register a stark, settled emptiness.