He pauses before a deserted house by the roadside.

Through iron-weeds and roses

And ancient beech and oak,

Old porches it discloses

Above the weeds and roses,

The drizzling raindrops soak.

Neglected walks a-tangle

With dodder-strangled grass;

And every mildewed angle

Heaped with dead leaves that spangle

The paths that round it pass.

The creatures there that bury

And hide within its rooms,

And spidered closets — very

Dim with gray webs — will hurry

Out when the twilight glooms.

Owls roost in room and basement;

Bats haunt its hearth and porch,

And through some paneless casement

Flit, in the moon's enlacement,

Or firefly's twinkling torch.

There is a sense of frost here,

And gusts that sigh away.—

What was it that was lost here?

Long, long ago was lost here?—

Can anybody say?

My foot perhaps would startle

Some bird that mopes within;

Some owl above its portal,

That stares upon the mortal

As on a thing of sin.

The rutty road winds by it

This side the dusty toll.—

Why do I stop to eye it?

My heart can not deny it —

The house is like my soul.