The Old Inn

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1.

  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.

  2.

  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.

  3.

  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."

© Madison Julius Cawein