THE OLD INN.

Red-winding from the sleepy town,

One takes the lone, forgotten lane

Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown

Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain;

Light shivers sink the gleaming grain;

The cautious drip of higher leaves

The lower dips that drip again.—

Above the tangled tops it heaves

Its gables and its haunted eaves.

One creeper, gnarled to bloomlessness,

O'er-forests all its eastern wall;

The sighing cedars rake and press

Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;

While, where the sun beats, breaks a drawl

Of hiving wasps; one bushy bee,

Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall

To hum into a crack.— To me

The shadows seem too scared to flee.

Of ragged chimneys martins make

Huge pipes of music; twittering here

Build, breed, and roost.— My footfalls wake

Strange stealing echoes, till I fear

I'll meet my pale self coming near;

My phantom face as in a glass;

Or one men murdered, buried — where?

Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass

With lips that seem to moan “Alas.”