Coward Memory

A street half flecked with shade and sun, A last year’s leaf along it blown, A gray wall where green lichens run; Like water falling on dry stone, A robin’s ripe notes dropping one by one.

Sad sun and shade and sadness over all The distance blended into solemn hues, On the warm air suspended as a pall The sweetness dying violets diffuse, While from a single tree the ashen elm flowers fall.

At the street’s sudden end a shining square, The sunny threshold of an open door, Thick with the dust of an untrodden stair That leads beyond me to the upper floor-- Then memory halts--it dares not enter there.