Читать книгу Shapes and Shadows - Cawein Madison Julius - Страница 8

Quaint and forgotten, by an unused road,

An old house stands: around its doors the dense

Blue iron-weeds grow high;

The chipmunks make a highway of its fence;

And on its sunken flagstones slug and toad

Silent as lichens lie.

The timid snake upon its hearth's cool sand

Sleeps undisturbed; the squirrel haunts its roof;

And in the clapboard sides

Of closets, dim with many a spider woof,

Like the uncertain tapping of a hand,

The beetle-borer hides.

Above its lintel, under mossy eaves,

The mud-wasps build their cells; and in the floor

Of its neglected porch

The black bees nest. Through each deserted door,

Vague as a phantom's footsteps, steal the leaves,

And dropped cones of the larch.

But come with me when sunset's magic old

Transforms the ruin of that ancient house;

When windows, one by one, —

Like age's eyes, that youth's love-dreams arouse, —

Grow lairs of fire; and glad mouths of gold

Its wide doors, in the sun.

Or let us wait until each rain-stained room

Is carpeted with moonlight, pattened oft

With the deep boughs o'erhead;

And through the house the wind goes rustling soft,

As might the ghost – a whisper of perfume —

Of some sweet girl long dead.