"A Ghost's Lament"

The loneliness of night is worst of all.
I find no peace in places that I love,
No happiness to salve my wounded wit.
The desolation of a country home
Where I once danced and laughed away the hours,
The graceful grandeur of a horseshoe arch
And arabesques, millennial and vast,
Both haunt me equally with my retreat,
Where I could never find a greater peace.
My voice rings hollow, hanging in the air.
I call to strangers, and they pass me by;
Muqarnas questions pend without reply.
A cruel hoax that after death we haunt
Unseen the very things that haunted us . . .
The narrator is the ghost of Washington Irving, writer-in-residence at the Alhambra when he composed his history of the architectural wonder. The "country home" is the Knickerbocker Mansion, where he was a frequent visitor, the "retreat" Sunnyside.
Randy, I was needling the oversensitive Greek, Giorgio, who had a question directly below mine on the first page and always advertises himself as the "Greek poet." I'm from New York, and somewhat ironically so was Washington Irving, whose specter haunts these fourteen lines.