Xiii

Now in the hollow of a hill,-- Like a glow-worm held in a giant hand,-- Under the sunset’s last red band, And one star hued like a daffodil, The windowed lamp of a cabin glows; The charcoal-burner’s, whose hut is poor But always open; beside whose door An oak grows gnarled and a pine stands slim. Clean of soul, though of feature grim, Here he houses where no one knows, His only neighbors the cawing crows, That make a roost of the pine’s top limb: His only friend the fiddle he bows As he sits at his door in the eve’s repose Making it chuckle and sing and speak, Lovingly pressed to his swarthy cheek.

And over many a root, through flowers and weeds, Past lonely places where the raccoon breeds, By many a rock and water lying dim, Roofed with the brier and the bramble-rose, Under a star and the new-moon’s rim, Downward the wood-way leads to him, Down where his lone lamp gleams and glows, A pencil slim Of marigold light under leaf and limb.

In Solitary Places]