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; 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.

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.

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."