THE TAILOR

Few footsteps stray when dusk droops o'er

The tailor's old stone-lintelled door.

There sits he stitching half asleep,

Beside his smoky tallow dip.

“Click, click,” his needle hastes, and shrill

Cries back the cricket beneath the sill.

Sometimes he stays, and over his thread

Leans sidelong his old tousled head;

Or stoops to peer with half-shut eye

When some strange footfall echoes by;

Till clearer gleams his candle's spark

Into the dusty summer dark.

Then from his crosslegs he gets down,

To find how dark the evening is grown;

And hunched-up in his door he will hear

The cricket whistling crisp and clear;

And so beneath the starry grey

Will mutter half a seam away.