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 | The poems of Madison Cawein |  |
58
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,
Where breezes bend the gleaming grain
And cautious drip of higher leaves
The lower dips that drip again,
Above the tangled trees it heaves
Its gables and its haunted eaves.
One takes the lone, forgotten lane
Straight through the hills. A brush-bird brown
Bubbles in thorn-flowers sweet with rain,
Where breezes bend the gleaming grain
And cautious drip of higher leaves
The lower dips that drip again,
Above the tangled trees it heaves
Its gables and its haunted eaves.
One creeper, gnarled and blossomless,
O'erforests all its eastern wall;
The sighing cedars rake and press
Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
While, where the sun beats, drone and drawl
The mud-wasps; and one bushy bee,
Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
To crowd into a crack.—To me
The shadows seem too scared to flee.
O'erforests all its eastern wall;
The sighing cedars rake and press
Dark boughs along the panes they sprawl;
While, where the sun beats, drone and drawl
The mud-wasps; and one bushy bee,
Gold-dusty, hurls along the hall
To crowd into a crack.—To me
The shadows seem too scared to flee.
59
Of ragged chimneys martins make
Huge pipes of music; twittering, here
They build and brood.—My footfalls wake
Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
I 'll see my pale self drawing near,
My phantom self as in a glass;
Or one, men murdered, buried—where?—
Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
With lips that seem to moan “Alas!”
Huge pipes of music; twittering, here
They build and brood.—My footfalls wake
Strange stealing echoes, till I fear
I 'll see my pale self drawing near,
My phantom self as in a glass;
Or one, men murdered, buried—where?—
Dim in gray, stealthy glimmer, pass
With lips that seem to moan “Alas!”
| The poems of Madison Cawein | |