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He pauses before a deserted house by the wayside:

Through ironweeds and roses And scraggy beech and oak, Old porches it discloses Above the weeds and roses The drizzling raindrops soak.

Neglected walks a-tangle With dodder-strangled grass; And every mildewed angle Heaped with dead leaves that spangle The paths that round it pass.

The creatures there that bury Or hide within its rooms And spidered closets--very Dim with old webs--will hurry Out when the evening glooms.

Owls roost on beam and basement; Bats haunt its hearth and porch; And, by each ruined casement, Flits, in the moon’s enlacement, The wisp, like some wild torch.

There is a sense of frost here, And winds that sigh alway Of something that was lost here, Long, long ago was lost here, But what, they can not say.

My foot, perhaps, would startle Some owl that mopes within; Some bat above its portal, That frights the daring mortal, And guards its cellared sin.

The creaking road winds by it This side the dusty toll.-- Why do I stop to eye it? My heart can not deny it-- The house is like my soul.